Coracle
by ncfan
Summary: Better the illusions that exalt us than ten thousand truths.
1. Threshold

Hello, and welcome to the classic story of boy meets girl. Or, rather, girl meets boy washed up on the beach. Umm, for updates, I'm not sure, but I'm going to try to aim for updating at least once a week. And while I will try not to diverge from canon that much, I'm not going to consider myself bound to it; it's much more fun that way. I basically consider this my interpretation, perhaps not correct, but still valid, of what happened in the "real world."

If you recognize the summary entry, yes, that is a Pushkin quote. I suppose this fills my quota of pretentious quotes. That quote is not my property any more than this story is; I suppose that fills my disclaimer quota as well.

Anyway, I hope you all like it.

* * *

_Threshold_

* * *

What makes up the true essence of a person? is a question that Hachijo Ikuko, young, experienced writer she may be, often asks herself. After all, it's important that she understand her characters completely; otherwise, they seem to her as flat as the paper upon which she brings them to life. Their personalities, their lives and motivations, all these things she feels she must map out before she ever sets to her plot, even if the story she plans to write only turns out to be twenty pages long. She simply can't think of any other way.

"The weather channel said it would be cloudy today," Ikuko mutters, wincing against the overly bright coastal sunlight pouring in through the large windows. She goes to shut the dusty white curtains. Enough sunlight filters through this sheer cloth that she can see just fine, without irritation.

Another question that doesn't make its way into her head quite as much is "What do they have?" It's a question that isn't often applied to Ikuko either, but it is important.

Ikuko has a house by the glittering sea and a small fortune in inheritance money—both from the same source. She has a great wealth of dusty old books, few of which were hers to start with. She has a five-year-old, long-haired black cat named Bernkastel, her only companion in this remote place five miles from the nearest town. Ikuko also has a talent for creating people and whole worlds in the breadth of cool pages, which she uses to while away the hours in comfortable solitude, left to the company of her writing, of her dusty phantom worlds.

What Ikuko does _not _have is any experience with tragedy.

("What do they _not_ have?" is probably a more important question than "What do they have?" Ikuko never thinks about that, though.)

Something soft brushes against her leg and Ikuko looks down to see Bernkastel pawing at her anxiously. Ikuko crosses through the living room to the kitchen, only to have her suspicions confirmed; the food dish is empty. Bernkastel goes to circling the small white dish, tail nearly dragging on the floor, and it's all Ikuko can do not to roll her eyes; such behavior would be childish, beneath her.

"If you're so hungry, why don't you just go out and catch something yourself?" she asks dryly, referencing the many mice and small (or sometimes not so small) birds that have in the past been left for Ikuko to find on the front stoop, or, more commonly, on the back porch. "The cat door's not locked. Alright, if you want food that badly…"

Though she can write of tragedy and loss, Ikuko herself has lived a life largely removed from tragedy and the sting of death. Oh yes, someone had to die for her to get this big house—a grandparent, in fact—but she had not known him well and hadn't learned of his death until months after the fact. By that time, she was so distanced from the whole affair that she could react to it the detached, vaguely sad way one would have to discover that a stranger had died.

She has no dead parents or siblings to contend with—Ikuko has no siblings to begin with, so the latter will remain a non-issue. Nor is there the specter of lost love to follow her. She's never lost a friend to premature death nor watched her home go up in flames. There have been no great disasters or tragedies in her life, none at all.

Maybe that's why, though she can infuse so much passion in other things, can make them seem so real that they hurt, when Ikuko writes of tragedy and loss, there is a great, yawning emptiness in her words.


	2. castaway, still drifting

_castaway, still drifting_

* * *

It stormed last night, one of those freak ocean gales that comes out of nowhere and leaves the same way. Thunder made the windows rattle, lightning throwing light on everything that should be dark. Ikuko didn't mind it—she never gives much thought to what happens if the house is struck by lightning—but Bernkastel sat perched on the edge of the bed all night, every muscle tensed and eyes as round as coins.

"_The storm's not going to get you, Bern," Ikuko mumbles, rolling over to find a cool pillow. "Rain can't get in here."_

Now, the storm has passed and the dawn sun glitters on the water. The rain is gone but the air is still cool and smelling of rain and the ubiquitous salt. All is silent except for the rhythmic ebb and flow of the ocean tide. Not a single bird has stirred today, not the little Izu thrushes who inhabit the sparse copse of trees nearby, on the side of the house facing away from the water, not even the seagulls. Perhaps they've all gone somewhere there's a lesser threat of rain. Without them, the silence is nothing short of eerie.

_This sounds like a good scene for a story, if I can ever think of a scenario to fit it into._

Having pulled on her rain boots, Ikuko slides down off of her back porch and starts to make the short walk down to the shore.

Ikuko's house is situated just before the solid earth gives way to sandy soil. If she walks in a straight line from her back porch, the ground slopes gently downwards until she reaches the water, but not so if she chooses to walk left or right. On one side, the earth turns to sand dunes dotted with tall, dry grasses. On the other, there comes a vertical drop that, if you walk far enough, eventually comes to be a sheer cliff of roughly sixty feet, opening up not to sand but stony ground that can only invite death. Ikuko wonders sometimes if anyone has ever fallen from this cliff.

The beach always looks so different after a storm. Sometimes it has been completely denuded of shells and the occasional piece of litter (The beach itself is owned by the local government, and kept open to the public; there have been many occasions when Ikuko wishes it wasn't). At others, the rough tides have washed up more flotsam than Ikuko ever thought possible.

She usually hopes for the latter, even if the debris does clutter the lovely white sand. If Ikuko often wanders the beach after a thunderstorm, it's in the (often vain) hope that she will find something to serve as inspiration for a new story. In memory, this has only actually worked once, when she found a piece of driftwood with part of a name on it and made a story about a doomed ship out of it. _If it worked once…_

_At least, _she thinks to herself, adjusting the angle of her hat, _there will be no tourists today, seeing as it's October. Even if it has been warm._

There's not much to be found this morning. The occasional patch of seaweed, deep green or rust red, catches her eye, but Ikuko doesn't see how she could make a story out of seaweed. _Well, maybe it if was about food. No, that won't do._

_The beach really is bare this time, _Ikuko muses critically, hands on her hips. _There's not so much as a broken shell. That storm must have really wiped it out, but you'd think there'd at least be a bit of driftwood or a rock lying around here. But no, nothing, nothing at—_

_Wait._

The tide has drawn out especially far this morning. Far from where Ikuko stands, where the rough, dry sand gives way to wet sand made smooth by the ocean's constant tumbling, there is a large mass. Shallow water laps about it; it must be heavy, whatever it is, because it doesn't drift in and out like the seaweed around it.

Ikuko tilts her head and frowns, soon having to brush her dark hair out of her face thanks to the breeze blowing it back and forth. Now burning with curiosity—_what could this be?_—she starts to walk towards it.

_Litter doesn't get that big. A piece of driftwood wouldn't survive its journey to the beach in this size either; it would be broken up into smaller bits by the surf. A rock, maybe, left exposed after the storm? But wouldn't I have been able to see part of it beforehand, sticking out of the sand? And wouldn't it be smoother after being eroded by the ocean for so long?_

All this she contemplates, her heart starting to race as she nears the object, starting to doubt its identity as a rock. _What could it be, _she wonders, _to be so big? A beached dolphin? But I don't see fins, and that's not the right color for a dolphin._

Then, as Ikuko gets within a yard of the object, she understands.

A human corpse.

_Well, _she thinks, more detached at the sight than most would be, _this is unusual. What an odd find. Maybe this will help serve as a muse._

Others would go screaming at the sight of a dead body, go crying for help to the nearest person or phone. That does seem to be pretty much the only socially acceptable reaction to finding a human corpse in a place where it should not be. Ikuko, however, uncaring of what constitutes "socially acceptable behavior", feels no panic, no fear, no horror. She might go for help if this person was still alive, but clearly, he is dead. He must be.

Her curiosity only heightened, provoked into madness, Ikuko advances on the corpse, crouching beside it to get a closer look. The water laps at her feet and she gathers her skirt in one hand to keep it from getting wet. Later, she supposes, she'll call the police to collect him, but he's dead. He can wait for a morgue.

The body belongs to one who was once a man. His hair is stark white, especially stunning next to his, raw, red, badly sunburned skin. _He looks so young, though, _Ikuko notes, as she brushes his slightly long hair away from his face absently. Indeed, this corpse does look as though it belongs to a very young man, about Ikuko's age, if not younger, despite this ridiculously white hair. She decides that his hair must not have been this color originally, that it must have been bleached by the sun and the saltwater.

_Can hair even get that shade of white from being bleached? It doesn't even look blond; it just looks white. Can hair get like that?_

His clothes are torn and faded. That shirt he's wearing must have been deep red at some point, but has been faded to the point of nearly appearing pink. His shoes and socks (if he had any to start with) are gone, exposing red, burnt feet. The fingernails of the hand Ikuko can see are split, broken, and dull after having been assaulted by the salt.

For a moment, a long moment silent except for the pounding waves—the tide is coming in, coming to reclaim what it offered up—Ikuko wonders who he was. Who was this young man, to have his life cut short, to meet death in the ocean? Ikuko could think up hundreds of pages of words of what his life could have been, and all of that would come to nothing, because he can no longer draw breath, because it ended here.

Death makes all the tales of man pointless—_Or does it? There's so much you can say, thanks to death, so much you can feel, so much you can imagine. Death is the only thing that gives anything else meaning._

_But his life no longer has any meaning, does it._

After a few moments more, Ikuko starts to frown. She knows that a body left out at sea should be bloated after a few days—this one doesn't look like it's only been floating for a few hours. This body should look hideously bloated, not pristine as it is. Furthermore, there's a distinct—and abnormal—absence of scavengers. No maggots, no birds, no crabs, not even the small mammals that would find a corpse to be a handsome meal. This corpse has been left immaculate, completely untouched.

Her heart starts to pound again, so hard that her ribs strain and ache. Ikuko turns the body over onto its back and pulls at the dead man's shirt collar so she can feel at the neck.

Only, to the discovery of the ocean and one dumbstruck woman, he's not a dead man at all.


	3. Blank Slate

_Blank Slate_

* * *

The doctors call him "John Doe." He has been hospitalized for his sunburns, for having swallowed far more seawater than what can be considered safe, and for severe dehydration and starvation. The young man is hooked up to an IV, a saline drip; he looks so small in that bed, his skin seeming even redder than before, even though now that he's out of the sun, his sunburn can only go down. The doctors are optimistic, though; they speculate that, depending on when he regains consciousness, he should be able to be discharged within a week.

Ikuko's not sure why, but she is being treated by the doctors here in the town hospital—good thing for this man that the nearest town has a hospital—as the man's next of kin. She really doesn't know why. She's not related to the man; she doesn't even know him. She's just the one who found him on the beach.

_I'm not really complaining. _No, Ikuko certainly is not. The fire of her curiosity, not yet cooled by ennui, keeps her burning to know who this man is. The story of how he ended up on the beach outside of her house should make for good listening, and maybe good writing later on.

_Just please don't let it be something boring, like "I went out for a swim—in my clothes, no less!—but got caught in a riptide." That would be too disappointing. I might cry. Well… _Ikuko grimaces; she can't remember the last time she actually cried over something. _Well, maybe not "cry." _

Now, she sits in the corner of the room in which "John Doe" has been placed, starting to get bored. _Really _bored. It's late, and she's tired as well, but she's not entirely sure what to do. _Should I just go home? It's not a long drive. Does Bernkastel have enough food? Yes, I think she does. I wish I had something to read; there's absolutely nothing to do here._

_Child of Man, I dearly hope that you have not kept me here so long for nothing._

Night darkness—_I can't believe how the time flies in autumn; it was just morning, wasn't it?_—seeps through the window with its half-open blinds, and Ikuko starts to tell herself that she needs to go home, needs to sleep so she can be rested for tomorrow and not look like a hag from lack of sleep. _I'm still wearing my rain boots; I must look like such a child. _He'll still be here in the morning, after all.

Then, she sees his eyelashes start to flutter.

-0-0-0-

He has been drifting in darkness, in a soft, gentle sea of oblivion, like being returned to the warm embrace of his mother's womb. The darkness is welcoming, inviting him to stay, to never have to return to the waking world again—_But is this a dream, or is it the real world? There's no way to tell until he transitions into the other, and even then, it's all a matter of perception._

The darkness wants him to stay here, forever, and if he's honest, he would like to stay. This young man doesn't know what it is about wakefulness and the other world that so fills him with dread, but he doesn't want to leave this welcome oblivion. He doesn't want to go face the world that will make him live again, make him face what living entails.

But there's not a choice.

_What's… that light?_

The darkness… The darkness is fading. Though he wants to stay in this embrace, light is starting to intrude on his silent world of nothingness. _Why can't I stay? Why do I have to go there?_

For one moment, he clings fast and hard to his solitary world, but then, the light splits the world like lightning and shatters it like brittle glass. Nothing can stand against light forever, the quiet truth says. With a great wrenching, he opens his eyes.

Everything is white here, artificiality to the natural tones of unconsciousness. It hurts his eyes, scorches those soft, sensitive retinas that have become used to much gentler darkness. For a few moments, he is too groggy to form thought, his eyes too blurry to make out his surroundings. All he can focus on is trying to see properly, trying to make out his surroundings. As his eyes start to clear, he sees white walls, equipment, feels a thin mattress beneath him, turns his head to one side and sees the needle inserted into his arm.

A hospital room.

And then, the fear, the fear that he ought to have felt from the beginning, at not knowing where he is or how he got here, sets in. He tries to lift his head, his arms, his legs, anything, to get out of this bed and leave—the instinct to flee has reared its head and claws at his mind until he couldn't ignore it if he wanted to—but he can't move. His limbs are heavy and weak, flaccid and as limp as loose as rubber, and yet feel as though they've been weighted with bricks of lead. It's like he's been chained to the bed, yet he sees no sign of manacles.

"…Where…" It hurts to speak, hurts so much. Every breath hurts like fire, his throat as raw as though someone has rubbed sandpaper up and down his windpipe for hours on end. "…Where am I?" He manages a weak croak, and even that much is a strain so great that he doesn't think he would like to talk again, not until his throat feels better.

At this, he hears from so far off that it may as well be on the other side of the earth a voice calling for "Doctor Hayashi." He tries to pinpoint that source of that distorted voice, but can't.

After a few moments of hearing nothing but his heart pound ever faster (_Where am I? Where am I? Oh God, where am I?_), the thundering of footsteps (_or maybe just a whisper_) echoes starkly against a hard floor. "What is it?" This time, he can hear a little better. It's a man's voice, with no crack indicating advanced age. This is probably Doctor Hayashi.

"He's awake," responds the one who called for the doctor. This voice is soft enough that it likely belongs to a woman, but he can't be sure until he sees that particular speaker.

At that simple statement, the doctor leans close over him, a slightly perplexed but nonetheless relieved smile washing over his lips. Personally, the young man thinks that the doctor is leaning a little closer towards him than he would like, but says nothing. He gets the feeling that it might be churlish to say so, and he just can't find the willingness to speak if he doesn't have to.

"Well, you certainly are awake earlier than expected." It's obvious that the doctor is taking pains to make himself seem as unthreatening as possible. Easily accomplished, considering he's so thin that he looks like he might blow away in a gentle draft of air.

He merely lifts his eyebrows, not sure what to say to that and unwilling to feel the harsh burning if he tries to find something to say. When were they _expecting _him to be awake, then? And how did he get here in the first place? He's assuming that "here" is a hospital if there's a doctor in it, but people go to hospitals if they're sick, or injured. How did he get to be sick, or injured? These are all valid questions, things that burn on his tongue, but he'll save them, however much they clamor in his mouth, for a time when it doesn't hurt so much to talk.

At his silence, the doctor goes on, behavior as though he didn't say anything before. "We were hoping you'd be able to answer a few questions for us."

Knowing he's going to have to answer this, the young man mutters, "I'll try."

The doctor nods briskly, whipping out a clipboard and pen. "Do you know where you are?"

"A hospital."

"Good. Given that you were unconscious when you were brought here, I'm going to assume you don't know how you got here?"

"Yeah," he croaks.

"Perfectly normal." If that's supposed to be reassuring, it isn't. It really isn't. "Do you have any idea why would be in a hospital?"

He swallows hard, and rather than speaking, just shakes his head.

At this, the doctor starts to look just a little troubled. His brow is furrowed like an accordion left in a state of rest. "Can I have your name, for the record? We should be able to contact your family."

He tries to give his name. He really does. But he can't. It's not a case of just being tired and having it stuck on the tip of his tongue, unwilling to fly away from his lips, either. He strains and struggles to think of a name he thinks might be his, racks his brains for a name. His endeavors become more desperate with each moment that he can't think of anything.

Eventually, he realizes that he's not going to be able to think of something, anything at all. He suddenly notices just how hot the skin on his face and hands is. _Why is my skin so hot? It itches, too. Why?_

_And why can't I remember my name?_

"I…" The nameless man swallows down on a lump in his throat, barely able to speak, but not from the pain in his throat. "…I don't know."

The doctor's frown deepens. "You don't know?"

He tries to remember other things, like the faces of his family or friends, where he went to school, where he lived. These are things that, in a normal person, should be as easy to recall as what they ate at their last meal.

But he can't. Where his memories should be, where all the catalogued names should be, where his life should be, there is a vast, yawning emptiness. Just a chasm of darkness where his life should be.

He remembers nothing. Nothing at all.

"I don't."

-0-0-0-

As the doctor leaves the room, face troubled, likely to consult his colleagues, Ikuko sits back in her chair, knuckles over her mouth, thunderstruck. _Amnesia! What a twist! I must say, you have not disappointed me at all. _She does not immediately make her presence known to the man, who lies back in his bed, looking so frustrated, so anxious. Instead, she leans back, her purple eyes narrowing speculatively.

Ikuko likes to consider herself well-read, especially so for a young woman of her age; in fact, she would be deeply mortified if someone tried to imply that she was not. In her house there is a library whose walls are filled with books; the shelves full, she's moved on to stacking them on the floor, on shelves in other rooms, anywhere she can find room for them. Among these literally hundreds of books, there is, of course, at least one about amnesia, and Ikuko has of course read it.

The inability to recall past information is known as retrograde amnesia; alternatively, there is a type of amnesia known as anterograde amnesia, where the sufferer is unable to retain new information. Obviously, both types have varying degrees of severity. The former rarely exists without some degree of the latter, though it has been known to happen. To have someone who has forgotten literally all of their past, though, to the point that they can't even remember their own name or remember someone calling them by that, is even rarer.

Ikuko purses her lips shrewdly. She's never encountered suffering from amnesia in any form before—a new experience, to be sure. It would be interesting to see how this plays out if the man continues to reside somewhere she can observe him. Those suffering from retrograde amnesia and live a full life afterwards rarely go their whole lives without eventually regaining at least some of their memories; it would definitely be fascinating to watch him claw his way back into memory, to see how long it would take.

There's another reason she might want to watch him, as well.

Hachijo Ikuko has experienced modest success with her short stories, especially in the mystery genre, though she likes to dip her toes into another genre from time to time as well (It should be noted that this "modest" success has never actually extended to official publishing). Yes, the whole "amnesiac" plotline has become so hackneyed over the past decades that it's positively laughable to introduce it into literature nowadays. But think of how it would be if she could make a book out of someone climbing their way back into memory, without the cheap reset buttons so often employed by today's books and television shows?

Oh, obviously, it would have to be marketed as a fictional story, with the names changed, to protect this man's privacy, as well as Ikuko's own—she has no intention of being slapped with a lawsuit by him or his family if he gets his memories back and decides he doesn't like what he reads. And it might be a hard sell, given that "amnesiac plotlines" are, again, so horribly over-used. But think of the possibilities. It would certainly stave off boredom for a while, at the very least, even if no one ever agreed to publish that book.

(Maybe there's another reason that doesn't cross Ikuko's mind, but still exists in a small place in her heart. Maybe she's curious about him for curiosity's own sake, rather than some grasping purpose. Maybe she's curious about the man who washed up on the beach half-dead, and maybe her possessive streak's already starting to assert itself.

Maybe.)

Ikuko smoothes down her rumpled skirt as she stands, telling herself what to say. _Don't come across as overbearing or threatening, or shady in any way. Just try to be as friendly as possible. You win more flies with honey, after all—and this is a very appealing fly._

Upon crossing the short distance from her chair to the young man's bedside, Ikuko affixes a smile to her face. She has before been told that, when forced, her smiles tend to have a less than relaxing effect on the one they're directed at, but frankly, Ikuko doesn't care much. A smile has to be less intimidating than a frown, or even a neutral expression, and a smile is a far superior mask than either. "Good evening," she says to him quietly.

The young man frowns a bit, clearly noting the lack of white coat and nametag on this newcomer, and judging her not to be a doctor. "Hi… Who are you?"

_At least he keeps his wits about him enough to think to ask. _"My name is Hachijo Ikuko," Ikuko introduces herself, with a flourish of the hand and the deepening of her thin-lipped, catlike smile. "I'm the one who found you on the beach."

At that, he looks her straight in the eye for the first time, face showing the first spark of true interest in anything that's been said to him. His eyes are so blue. The boy's hair has been cut so short by one of the hospital staff that Ikuko can easily see his face, and to one who's used to living among a population made up primarily of dark-eyed people, his eyes really are stunningly blue. Identical in shade to the ocean on a summer's day, when the midday sun is bright and there's not a cloud in the sky.

"Ah…" The man forces out a laugh that sounds more like the noise a small animal makes when it's being slowly, oh-so-slowly strangled. "I guess I should be grateful to you. I'd give you my name, but like I said, I don't know it." Again, a frustrated look comes over his face, not quite distressed, but nonetheless bothered by the fact that he's been so cruelly robbed of his past life.

"Quite a puzzle you've been presented with," Ikuko murmurs, her eyes growing especially glassy. "Can you remember nothing at all?"

The young man frowns for a few moments, scrunching up his forehead like a small child confronted with an especially trying riddle, clearly lost in thought. After a long silence, in which Ikuko's smile grows more brittle, fatigue starting to show on her, he speaks, and tells Ikuko something surprising. "Yeah…" He nods, those blue eyes drooping slightly. "…My age. I'm eighteen."

She'd expected him to say "I don't know", but Ikuko masks her surprise well. All she tells herself is that she must remember to write all of this down when she gets home. _Maybe I should compose the book in journal style. That would give the book a more authentic feel, I think._

_I almost hope they don't find out who he is, or manage to track down his family, at least not for a while. Yes, this man needs to go home, and yes, he probably has a family somewhere who are searching frantically for him. All fine and good. But this really is too fascinating an opportunity to pass up. Just give me a few weeks, a few months, time enough to make headway._

So lost in thought is Ikuko that she jumps a little when she hears the young man stifle a yawn clumsily, lifting a hand in the attempt to cover his mouth but finding himself still too weak to expend the effort.

Her smile fades, but truth be told, she's grateful to him for making his tiredness known, even if he does look a little embarrassed at having yawned while talking to someone. Ikuko herself is quite tired and doesn't know how else she would have been able to get out of this situation. She needs to go home, write her notes, make sure the cat hasn't gone completely off the rails from having been alone all day, eat something (_Ikuko just now notices the way her stomach bites_), and sleep.

"I'll come back tomorrow, and leave you to sleep," Ikuko tells him, careful to sound extra gracious. If she makes a good impression, the one who found him and the first person this man has seen beside the doctor, maybe he'll want to see her again.

He nods, lip twitching slightly. The sterile light makes the lines of his face seem harsh, but after Ikuko blinks once, she realizes that he just looks tired. "Yeah. See you, Hachijo-san."

The honorific doesn't really grate, but Ikuko understands the importance of ripping down barriers if she wants to make this man comfortable in her presence, so she says "Call me Ikuko."

* * *

Ah, Ikuko is a selfish person. But I don't think she's especially more selfish than the average person; she's just much more frank about it and rather unashamed about it too. But she is human, though even she would like to think of herself as something different. And as for Battler/Toya, I do think he would develop a somewhat different personality after losing all of his memories. Some aspects of the personality are nature, but I do think most of them are nurture and he is the titular blank slate.

See you all (I know you're out there) with the next chapter.


	4. The Pandora Complex

_The Pandora Complex_

* * *

His sunburns have started peeling. This isn't so bad on his hands, except where fingers connect to the hand itself and the spaces in between; the burn wasn't as bad on his hands to start with, anyway. His head and his feet, however, that's another story.

The young man's head and feet, they are what bore the brunt of the pitiless sun. His peeling skin, it cracks, itches, burns, every time he turns his head or shifts the weight of his feet. He's miserable, wincing, thankful for the cool air, thankful for the aloe vera he's been administered to make it a little easier. But God, his ears, his toes…

And his only comfort has been denied him. _"Don't pick," _the nurse had scolded him. "_It'll fester." _It would be so much easier on him if he was able to pick at his peeling skin. He knows it would hurt—this he knows from experience—but it only hurts in the way that it hurt to pull a scab: there is a momentary flash of pain, and a sting afterwards, but the fierce, savage satisfaction that comes after that overrides every other feeling. But he can't.

He really hopes that woman comes back today.

Hachijo Ikuko has come to visit him every day since the first day he has retained any memory, whether for just a few minutes or longer. Indeed, she has been his only visitor—it's not like there's anyone else here to perform that function.

She's just a little intimidating at times. Ikuko has the enigmatic, eerily knowing smile of a cat, and she doesn't seem to need to blink quite as much as other people do, purple eyes left perpetually half-closed. He feels as though she's always watching him, waiting for something to happen—God knows what. If she catches him unaware with her words, her smile widens and she'll tease him in some way.

But she saved him. The young man does not want to believe that she's lied to him—indeed, he does not want to believe anyone to be a liar. Ikuko, by her own words, found him lying on the beach one morning, and if she hadn't, he probably would have been swept out back to sea when the tide came in and drowned. And she has come to see him every day, and though she'll tease him for spacing out, she's never been unkind. He doesn't want to believe ill of her or anyone; he does like to think that she's a kind person beneath those sly smiles of hers.

_Ikuko-san… "Ikuko", as she insists, is probably as close as I have to a friend. Even if she is kinda scary and looks at me like she expects me to launch into a fit at any moment, though I get the impression that she'd like to see something like that._

_She's nice, though._

As if on cue, there comes a knocking at the door.

"Come in," the young man calls, uncaring of what Ikuko—she's the only one it could be; Doctor Hayashi isn't supposed to be back for hours—might think of his peeling skin or his disheveled white hair. He supposes he must not have been very self-conscious in his past life—or maybe this is a trait he's developed independently of his locked-away self. It's hard to tell.

Sure enough, it was Ikuko knocking. The overhead light catches on her heavy necklace and her many rings, dazzling to the eyes. Her pale blue skirt whispers like secrets trapped in a grand old home, forgotten by time. It must be windy outside today, because her long, dark hair is slightly windswept, and she smoothes it back down fastidiously with one hand as she draws up a chair, and sits down.

"And how are you today?" That practiced, too-serene smile appears on Ikuko's lips, as though it never left to start with.

The young man simply shrugs. "Not that much different from yesterday. My skin's peeling," he adds unnecessarily. Ikuko's not blind; she can probably see that his sunburned skin is curling away to reveal new, pink skin underneath.

"Hmm, yes." She gives a soft laugh that sounds more like a breath of air. "I _hate _to tell you this, but I'm afraid you look rather like a snake that's waited too long to shed its skin. It's rather gruesome."

He risks a grin, not wanting to appear flustered in front of her. "Yeah, but in a few days this snake will have a brand new skin, and you won't be able to tease it about that anymore."

Ikuko tilts her head to one side, her lip quirking out at the left, her smile looking distinctly lopsided now. "I'll just have to find something else to tease you about, then." Suddenly, she sits up straight in her chair, the smile vanishing from her lips to be replaced by something much more secretive, and somehow rather furtive. He can't help but look upon this with wariness. "Have you remembered anything more, besides your age?" she asks quietly, eyes fixed unblinkingly on his face.

Ah, there's the creepiness, back again. The young man wonders if Ikuko knows just how unsettling her gaze is when she fixes someone in that piercing stare. "No," he mumbles, not quite able to look at her.

He wishes he could say "Yes", both because Ikuko wouldn't stare at him like that anymore, and for his own sake.

That monster called "ignorance" sits in the corner of his room day and night, always watching him, never taking its eyes off of him; it's rather like Ikuko in that respect. It swishes its tail, waits for him to stop thinking, to stop wondering, so it can pounce and devour him entirely. But he won't stop thinking.

Even if his thoughts are only given over to idle daydreams, the young man suspects that he will never truly stop thinking, stop wondering about who he was. He has no clues, nothing to go on—as far as he knows, he doesn't have any distinctive identifying marks that would provide a clue, and according to the doctors there was nothing in the way of personal information found on him when he was brought in. There's no way for him to make an educated guess, so any speculation will just be conjectures, flights of fancy, but even that's better than nothing. Even that's enough to keep "ignorance" from eating him up. _My head hurts when I try to think about it, though._

Ikuko's attempt to make her smile reassuring doesn't have much of an effect in that direction, but he can tell she tried. "I'm sure it will come to you eventually."

_Yeah, I hope so. Even with the headaches._

She suddenly reaches down into the bag she brought with her. "I brought you something," Ikuko explains, wincing as she bends her back to pull out her "gift", "to pass the time until they discharge you." She holds out her "gift" to him.

Two thick books.

"You can read, can't you?" Ikuko asks with a needling smile. "I don't think I could bear to associate with someone completely illiterate."

"Of course I can read," the young man says defensively, hoping to high heaven that that's the truth and he hasn't forgotten how to read along with his memories. That would be beyond embarrassing; Ikuko would probably never let him forget it.

To his relief, when he takes the books from Ikuko, he can, quite readily, read the title and the author's name of the book on top.

_And Then There Were None_, by Agatha Christie.

"A mystery novel?" The young man asks blankly.

"One of Christie's best, in my opinion," Ikuko confirms, her eyes growing bright. "I hope you'll like it; at the very least, it and the other book should brighten your stay until the hospital lets you go."

_She really does just want me to feel better, _the young man realizes, _even if she does have such an odd manner about her. That's all she wants._

He summons a smile. "Thanks, Ikuko." As he opens the book, a strange, almost automatic thrill of excitement rips through him, with another sharp clang of pain on his skull; he ignores the latter but can't help but marvel at the former. "I think I must have liked mystery novels… before, I mean," he amends awkwardly.

Ikuko's smile doesn't break, but something flashes behind her eyes. "I'm so glad," she murmurs quietly. Then, she stands. "I'll see you tomorrow, okay?"

"Yeah, sure."

-0-0-0-

_So he thinks he liked mystery novels? _Ikuko's lip twitches as she steps out of her car. It's not sunny anymore, like it was this morning; the day is rather gray, in fact. Not especially overcast, with booming clouds as it would be if there was going to be rain later. Just gray, and gloomy. _I hate days like this. Either be sunny or rainy; don't vacillate between the two._

As she goes up the walk towards her front door, Ikuko gathers up the newspapers left on her front stoop. She subscribes to two newspapers, one from the nearest town, where her new find is currently residing, and one of the more popular ones from Tokyo. Most of the people in the town don't read any Tokyo newspapers, but Ikuko, who used to live in a much more, shall we say, metropolitan setting, likes to keep abreast of what's happening nationwide instead of just having a newspaper that catalogues the events of a single town.

First, the local newspaper. Ikuko sighs as she goes to sit down on one of the sofas set up in the living room—this house was furnished to accommodate regular guests, but instead the only one who ever sits on these soft cushions is Ikuko and Bernkastel. From somewhere nearby, she can hear a soft "Meow", but the cat has no interest in going to greet her housemate today.

Nothing of real interest. Some local fair is going to be in town soon, and apparently the town is so short on news that _this _has warranted a place on the front page. There's one entry in the obituaries, a seventy-eight-year-old dead of a heart attack—the town has such a disproportionate population of the elderly that such a thing is routine. Ikuko puts it aside, unsurprised but still pursing her lips disappointedly.

_Sad what these people think passes for exciting news._

Now is the Tokyo paper's chance to redeem newspapers in Ikuko's eyes. She slides it out of its plastic sheath, bracing the paper to see what they are using for their front-page story. _Don't fail me now._

And indeed, there is something on _this _paper that more than makes up for the disappointment of the other one.

'**PROMINENT FAMILY MASSACRED!**' the headline reads, and in an instant, Ikuko is hooked. _Yes! Yes! Yes! Finally, something worth reading in the newspaper instead of endless drivel! _Upon reading that the "prominent family" in question is in fact the Ushiromiya family, her eyes narrow.

The Ushiromiya family is—or rather, was, if this is anything to go by—a force to be reckoned with, a family with wealth on par with Ikuko's own. The family stronghold was supposed to be in Rokkenjima, an island no more than ten miles from this one, and they were rumored to be sitting on a fantastical amount of gold.

Ushiromiya Kinzo, though he was quite elderly, was without a doubt a formidable, well-respected and greatly feared man. If Ikuko is honest, he was, in a way, not unlike herself: unsociable, reclusive, and greatly involved with his books. However, Kinzo delved so deep into the world of the occult that he couldn't find his way out of it again; though Ikuko herself has read a few occult books, she's never found the subject matter so engrossing that she would be willing to give herself over to that incense-choked world.

Ikuko goes on reading the lengthy article, and gets the particulars that the police were willing to disclose to the public.

A bomb went off on Rokkenjima while all members of the Ushiromiya family (barring the youngest grandchild, Ange, who was absent due to illness) were gathered on the island for the yearly family conference. However, it appears that most, if not all of the family members and the servants present at the time were dead before the bomb went off, from apparent gunshot wounds.

The only survivor of the disaster, asides from Ange, is the eldest daughter of the family, Ushiromiya Eva, who fled to a part of the island out of the bomb's blast range. Though nothing in the article indicates complicity on her part, Ikuko can imagine that suspicion has fallen squarely on Eva's shoulders.

"_Some of the people present could not be found; it is assumed that their bodies were destroyed in the blast. The list of the dead and the survivors are as thus:_

_Ushiromiya Ange: _**SURVIVED_  
_**_Ushiromiya Battler: _**MISSING, PRESUMED DECEASED**_  
Ushiromiya Eva: _**SURVIVED**_  
Ushiromiya George: _**DECEASED**_  
Ushiromiya Hideyoshi: _**DECEASED**_  
Ushiromiya Jessica: _**DECEASED**_  
Ushiromiya Kinzo: _**DECEASED**_  
Ushiromiya Krauss: _**DECEASED**_  
Ushiromiya Kyrie: _**DECEASED**_  
Ushiromiya Maria: _**DECEASED**_  
Ushiromiya Natsuhi: _**DECEASED**_  
Ushiromiya Rosa: _**DECEASED**_  
Ushiromiya Rudolf: _**DECEASED**_  
_

_Servant Gohda Toshiro: _**DECEASED**_  
Servant Kumasawa Chiyo: _**DECEASED**_  
Attending Physician Nanjo Terumasa: _**DECEASED**_  
Servant Ronoue Genji: _**DECEASED**_  
Servant Yasuda Sayo, alias "Shannon": _**MISSING, PRESUMED DECEASED**_  
Servant Yasuda Yoshiya, alias "Kanon": _**MISSING, PRESUMED DECEASED**

_Anyone who can provide any information pertaining to the disaster is advised to call…"_

There's a telephone number, and a few pictures afterwards. Ikuko's eyes go right over the number, and survey the pictures instead.

Nothing special here. A few school pictures of the younger members, as well as one of Eva, who seems to be running away from the camera with her arm held up to shield her face. There's a wedding photo for Rudolf and a rather pregnant-looking Kyrie, who was apparently his second wife. That, and…

All idle thought, indeed, all thought, drifts away from Ikuko's mind as she looks at one of the school pictures in particular.

It shows a grinning boy with hair a shade of red not commonly found in nature, but from the absence of any roots, it doesn't look to have been dyed. _"Ushiromiya Battler, aged 18 at the time of his disappearance and presumed death."_

He looks just like the young man Ikuko found on the beach.

At that realization, Ikuko's mind snaps back into action and she leans back in the couch, staring up at the high ceiling.

Battler's body wasn't found among the others. This could, of course, as the newspaper article pointed out, be easily enough explained by the fact that the explosion would have utterly destroyed his body. Ikuko, however, is not so easily convinced by the lack of a body.

_Van Dine's Commandment, Number Seven: "There simply must be a corpse in a detective novel, and the deader the corpse, the better."_

_I'm aware that this is not a detective novel, nor a "mystery story." However, in real life, you should never assume that someone is dead until you have seen a body. That's premature thinking. When you hold a funeral for someone and they show up alive on your front doorstep the next day without a scratch on them, that's just embarrassing._

_Ushiromiya Battler's body was never found. And he does look so like my new acquaintance…_

Ikuko rests one ringed hand over her mouth. Rokkenjima really isn't far from here. Is it so impossible to believe that Battler could have escaped whatever it is that happened by trying to swim to the next island, and then washed up here?

_But I remember… In the timeframe in which this was supposed to have been happening, there was a horrible storm. It took the last of the azaleas and the hydrangeas, and the camellias as well, clean off of the bushes out front, scattering the petals all about the yard. _

_The waves must have been fifteen feet high. Anyone trying to swim in that sort of weather almost certainly would have drowned. If Ushiromiya Battler risked the ocean to get away from what was happening on Rokkenjima, then some angel of Heaven, or some demon of Hell, must have guided the course of his fate for him to have survived those hellish currents._

_Such a thing is a plot device in novels; indeed, people survive things they should not in novels all the time. But in real life, if a man dives into the ocean while there is a storm just short of a hurricane going on, I will cast my bets in favor of him drowning, rather than him being able to survive the storm and make it to dry land._

_But the resemblance is so strong…_

Ikuko shakes her head vigorously. Yes, this man could very well be Ushiromiya Battler. It is likely, in fact, despite all odds; even with a different hair color and style, and a badly sunburned face, the resemblance is truly striking.

He's Battler in body, possibly. But in mind, in heart? Not nearly so much. This man has no memories of his past life. Even if he is Ushiromiya Battler, sending him back to what's left of his family would be as good as sending him to live with strangers.

She won't say anything. For all she knows, she could be wrong. And even if she's right (which, Ikuko reiterates, is likely), he's not Battler in his mind; he's someone new, someone who has just now been born. And Ikuko has enough scruples not to relish the thought of sending him into a potentially life-threatening situation; even she wouldn't do that to someone for entertainment.

_Sending him to Eva, for her to care for him, would do him no favors. For all we know, she _did _kill their family, did kill all of them, just to get her hands on the gold, or the family headship, or whatever. If I sent him back to her, and that turned out to be true, how long would he survive? How long would it be before Ushiromiya Eva decided to finish the job, and silence the only living witness to her crimes? Even I couldn't do something like that, not in clear conscience._

_He's alone, on his own. He has nowhere to go. Absolutely nowhere. And I did want to keep an eye on him…_

Whether or not her find on the beach is the missing Ushiromiya scion, Ikuko finds that her interest in him has just redoubled. It will be interesting, very interesting indeed, to see what he recalls when he regains his memories.

* * *

You know, it figures that, just after I mentioned in an e-mail that I couldn't find _Twilight of the Golden Witch _anywhere on YouTube, I would find it the very next day. Oh well, I'm not complaining, even if the Internet has chosen to make a liar out of me. I found _Requiem _too; I'm probably not going to update this again until I'm finished with those two episodes, so for anyone who's reading this, sorry for the wait.

This does bring up the issue of canonicity. I was given more information about Ikuko by a very kind and helpful reviewer, and I watched the section about her from _Twilight. _I know already that a lot of what I've written here is pretty much non-canon. I'm going to try to incorporate some of what I learned from the section about her on YouTube in this story, but as for everything I can't fit in here?

I'm going to treat everything from _Twilight _that doesn't fit here as a fictionalization on the part of Toya and/or Ikuko in the writing of _Twilight_, both for privacy purposes and to make the story seem more interesting. Or maybe this is their fictionalized version. I'll try to finish up with the two episodes as soon as I can, so I hope to update this again within a week.


	5. Critical Decision

_Critical Decision_

* * *

The sunlight spills through the open window—it rained ridiculously hard last night, and the sunlight always seems a little brighter the morning after a storm has come and gone—and the young man raises a hand to shield his face from the sun. All told, however, this isn't really a bad way to wake up in the morning.

His skin's finally stopped peeling—Ikuko's going to have to find something else to tease him about now. Beneath the peel, his skin is maybe two shades darker than the unburned skin on his limbs and chest; not much in the way of a tan, considering he seems to have been pretty pale to start with. The doctors have let him walk around a bit, too; after finally being allowed to walk, being confined to the bed again, for any length of time, is just a little vexing.

And he's going to be discharged tomorrow.

Under normal circumstances, the young man supposes that a patient who's been in the hospital for a week would be overjoyed to learn that they're about to be able to go. They would be eager to hurry home to their families; there would probably be some sort of party to celebrate their being home. To them, leaving behind the cold, white walls of a hospital would no doubt be a welcome experience.

But not for this young man. He doesn't have anywhere to go—no friends, no family that he knows of to take him in. He has no home to go to, and no money. A nurse suggested a hostel, or a homeless shelter, in a city on the mainland, but he doesn't have the money to pay for passage there.

He doesn't even have a name.

That's the root of all this, the total loss of identity. He can't do anything for himself without a name to give to others; he needs a name for all things. The young man is beginning to understand just how powerless a creature without a name is, how much less of a person they are without a name. From a name, he can build an identity. But without one, he is little more than a faceless corpse taking up space. It's like being a bird with no wings; he's something that shouldn't exist, yet does anyway.

And he has tried to remember. No matter how great his struggles, however, he has remembered nothing apart from his age, and even that information is suspect. How did he come to the number 'eighteen'? What evidence does he have to back this up? He has no evidence, just the little push at the back of his mind telling him that this is the truth, but why trust that?

In the end, it doesn't matter that he has no way of proving that he's eighteen. He clings to that scrap of information like a castaway to driftwood, and tries to use it to figure other things out.

He's eighteen. That means he's either a senior in high school, or just graduated. Can he possibly remember the name of his high school? What prefecture is it in, what city? Did he live in Honshu, Hokkaido, Shikoku, Kyushu? Is he from the far north, the far south? What sort of faces did his parents wear at his entrance ceremony?

It's all useless though, completely useless. Though he may scour his mind for information related to the number 'eighteen', nothing turns up at all. For all he knows, that's not even his age, and the number is connected to something else, or nothing at all. For all he knows, 'eighteen' is just a number his mind plucked up at random, like the roll of a pair of dice.

Every time he tries to remember, he gets these stabbing pains in his head, too. Not long, enduring migraines that last for hours (mercifully); just momentary stabs of pain, like someone's hitting him on the head with a baseball bat. Though he can't help but think that he's just being paranoid, sometimes he thinks that this is his mind's way of telling him that he's better off leaving it alone.

So the young man can't be happy about being able to leave tomorrow, not if he doesn't somehow make a miraculous return to memory before then.

"And good morning to you."

The young man nearly flinches at the unexpected suddenness of that voice's arrival. Nearly, but not quite; there's no need to give Ikuko a new reason to start teasing.

Still, he hadn't expected her for a few more hours, at least. He can't say anything about when Ikuko goes to bed or wakes up in the morning, but she doesn't normally come to visit him until about eleven in the morning at the earliest. If anything, it's more common for her to show up in the afternoon.

Ikuko's smile widens just a little, in the manner of a cat who has just spied a fat, lame mouse. "Are you surprised to see me here so early?"

He shakes his head. "Nah," he lies. "It had to happen eventually."

"A 0.0001% chance, but I suppose you're right. It had to happen. Eventually." Ikuko sits down in a flurry of pale skirts. "How far have you gotten in those books I gave you?"

_I finally have a chance to surprise her; this should be good. _"I've finished them both," the young man declares, plenty triumphant and maybe just a little smug. He knows that smugness probably isn't a pretty emotion. However, the thought of him catching Ikuko off-balance for once is immensely satisfying; he wonders what she will look like when that normally unflappable face is shattered.

And indeed, it is a sight to behold. For a moment, the mask struggles pitifully to retain a foothold on Ikuko's face, but it can not deny defeat. Her eyes go round and her lips slacken. This only lasts a second, but that moment of seeing Ikuko dumbstruck, the man considers a victory in his camp.

When the moment passes, she actually laughs, bringing her fingers up over her mouth to hide her small teeth. "Both of them? Already? My goodness, you read fast."

The man shrugs. "I haven't had a whole lot to do here. Those books have been my only diversion."

"Still, between the two, there must be upwards of six hundred pages to digest. You must have had no small skill with speed reading before you lost your memory." Ikuko's glinting smile softens. "Have you remembered anything else?"

"No," he mutters reluctantly. "Why do you ask that every day?" he asks curiously. Really, Ikuko can't honestly expect him to suddenly regain all of his memories overnight, can she? That would be completely unreasonable; she has to know that.

Her eyes widen in a display—a rather overdone display, at that—of indignation. "Can't I show concern for a new friend? Your memory loss obviously troubles you. I simply wish for you to make your recovery; nothing more than that, my friend." She sits up straight in her chair, face rearranging itself into a startlingly businesslike mien. "If you're finished with the books, then may I have them back? I'm sorry that I didn't bring anything new, but I simply can not stand to be parted with my books for more than a few days."

_You're just like a little kid who has "so graciously" allowed a younger sibling to play with their toys, _the young man thinks, without rancor. _In theory, the younger child is allowed the full run of the toy train, but the older sibling will always be standing right over their shoulder to make sure they don't break it, and the moment the time allotted for the little kid to play with the toy has finished, the older sibling will demand it back. That's not all that generous of you, Ikuko; you must have been Hell to play with as a kid._

The young man reaches for the two books sitting on a nearby stand. "Sure. Here you go, Ikuko." After handing over the books, he sinks into his bed, grimacing and wondering again just where he's going to go when the hospital discharges him.

"Something troubling you?"

Apparently, Ikuko has picked up on his discontent.

When he looks up, Ikuko's brow is furrowed, her head tilted to one side. She appears to have been trying to get a better look at his face, maybe to burrow beneath his skin and pick his brains while she's at it. Ikuko would probably like to have such an opportunity. Her mouth speaks concern, but her eyes are completely opaque.

"I'm going to be discharge tomorrow," he informs her, gripping the bed sheets in his hands.

Ikuko's eyebrows lift. "Oh. Where do you plan on staying?"

"I haven't the faintest idea," the young man admits reluctantly, not meeting Ikuko's eyes. This isn't something he wants to be teased about.

"Hmm… Quite a predicament," Ikuko murmurs, eyes glazing over, voice drifting off. "Quite a predicament, indeed… Why don't you come live with me?" she asks brightly.

"What?" He can't help but give this blank exclamation. Ikuko's change in demeanor was just entirely too abrupt, like seeing a new personality come out to play; he can't be sure that his mind didn't just trick him.

A wicked smirk catches on her lip. "Be careful. If you use your ears too rarely, your hearing will fall into disrepair from lack of use."

"_Ikuko…_"

"Uh-hmm, sorry. What I said is that you can always come live with me, if there's nowhere else for you to go."

The young man narrows his eyes. This is, he will admit, a highly appealing offer. Ikuko is the only person here he knows, and even if she is prone to tease him every time he gives her an opening, he does count her as a friend. But he can't walk into this situation without caution.

Ikuko is a bit… _odd. _Not "screaming about the apocalypse from a street corner" odd, but there is definitely something about her that does not strike him as normal. When someone like him, who in his experiences with people is little more than an infant, can pick up on someone being odd, they must be very odd indeed. While the young man likes to think that she's probably not "tie you up in her basement and leave you down there for the rest of your life" odd either, he can't be entirely sure.

There's also logistics to be concerned with. Does Ikuko have the means to take care of another adult? Does she have the space, and the money? _Given the sort of clothes she wears, and all that jewelry she's always wearing, something tells me money probably isn't an issue for her._

_And I don't see that I have much of a choice._

"This isn't some sort of trick?" he probes cautiously, scouring Ikuko's pale, pink-cheeked face.

"Would I do that?"

"Maybe."

"Alright, true, but not right now. I mean what I said: you can come live with me, if you want to."

He frowns. "'Where you live' isn't going to turn out to be some cramped apartment, is it? I'd rather not have to sleep on your couch."

Ikuko purses her lips and shakes her head. "No, of course not. I live in a _big_ house, all by myself—well, apart from the cat. There are plenty of bedrooms, and plenty of space for you there. The only reason you'd ever sleep on a couch in my home would be if you wanted to—and once you lie down on a bed there, you'll _never _want to sleep on a couch again."

"So… You're just going to open your home to me out of the charity of your heart."

"Is that so hard to believe?"

The young man lets out a small sound that might be a laugh. She really does look so eager—almost too eager, but still, that eagerness is a decidedly endearing quality. "Okay, I will."

Ikuko beams—she really is incredibly jaunty today, instead of her usual, slightly reserved self. "It's settled, then. I'll have to talk to someone about getting you some clothes." She starts to get up to leave, before turning around. "One more thing."

"Yeah?"

"What are you going to be called?"

He blinks, and after a moment, his lip pulls hideously in one direction. He needs a name—he's starting to get tired of hearing Ikuko call him "my nameless friend" and hearing the doctors address him as "Mr. Doe." More than that, he can reclaim some power with a name.

With a name that is not his own, not his real name, he will become a bird with one wing, as opposed to a bird with two. He can't have both wings, because it's not his real name, not the name of his heart, and with only one wing, of course he can't fly. But it will still be better than having no wings at all; instead of being an aberration, he will only be half an aberration.

"How about…" The young man bites his lip. "How about…"

"You're more than welcome to make use of my family name," Ikuko supplies from the doorway helpfully, "for as long as you feel you need it."

That is helpful. One half of his new name has been given to him free of charge. The young man nods. "Thanks, Ikuko. I will be… Hachijo… Toya," he decides, thinking of _to _"ten" and _ya _"eight."

_I guess it makes sense. All I can remember about myself is that I'm eighteen; if that's the correct age, that is. "Toya" fits. "Toya", I'll be, until I know my real name. Maybe even afterwards._

Ikuko's lip twitches as she tucks the books she took back more securely in the crook of her arm. "It's fitting, I suppose. _Toya_," she enunciates, rolling the name speculatively on her tongue, "I'll be back tomorrow to pick you up. I'll see you then."

No longer nameless, Toya nods, and watches her leave, before going back to staring out the window, and watching the birds dart past, birds with two wings, who know who they are.


	6. A Bump on the Road

_A Bump on the Road_

* * *

Ikuko can't help but smile a little bit at how invigorated Toya looks to breathe in the fresh air when he steps out into the sunlight. Of course, after being cooped up in a hospital for more than a week, Ikuko supposes that anyone would have a right to look exuberant at being out. But the way he beams and grins at every sight the outside world has to offer reminds Ikuko distinctly of the way a child behaves on their first trip to the zoo. His slightly waxen face—an accomplishment, considering the suntan—seems to regain color at every breath taken of the brisk, salty air.

_That doesn't look like Ushiromiya Battler's smile at all. The smile I saw in that picture was, I don't know, maybe a bit roguish? No, _very _roguish. He had the typical smile of a teenage boy who thinks he's on top of the world. This smile, on the other hand, just exudes innocent cheer. Completely innocent._

And then, as if to deliberately spoil the mood: _I must remember to write this down._

Ikuko's smile fades, to be replaced by a grimace, when an icy wind seems to cleave her clean in two. The unseasonably warm weather vanished without a trace yesterday, some time in the afternoon. "Aren't you cold?" she calls to Toya, who's walking a few paces in front of her. They're in the parking lot, and really, he'd do better to walk alongside Ikuko, since he has no idea what her car looks like.

"Not really," he responds brightly, continuing to behave as though he can't feel the cold at all. And maybe he can't. But still…

_The cold front really was ridiculously sudden, and it's not going to get any better. It's not good for him to ignore the cold._

"I brought a coat for you, Toya." And indeed, it is a nice, thick coat. Ikuko only hopes it fits properly, or that if it doesn't, it's too big rather than too small; she had to guess at the size he would wear. "It would certainly be a shame if, so soon after you left the hospital, you had to enter it again thanks to hypothermia."

This seems to get the idea across to him. Toya stops his progress, and instead walks back towards Ikuko, a grimace on his face where a smile used to be. "Good point," he says gingerly, betraying his utter lack of enthusiasm at the thought of having to go back to the hospital for any length of time. He takes the proffered coat, and walks more slowly this time, alongside Ikuko instead of in front of her. He avoids the gaze of all whom they pass as they walk.

The remainder of the trip to the car is passed in silence, and continues as they pile in. Toya stares out the passenger side window pensively, face unreadable. Ikuko doesn't notice how his face goes white when they hit a speed bump.

As she drives out of town, Ikuko's mind drifts.

The house is clean from head to toe; there's plenty of food in the refrigerator. Bern's litter box has been cleaned, and the whole house smells of the light scent of Ikuko's favorite air freshener. Everything is neat and clean, for the purpose of making a good impression on the main inhabitant. _Here's hoping he isn't allergic to cats. I'm not getting rid of Bernkastel for him._

Normally, Ikuko wouldn't go to such trouble. Normally, she wouldn't participate in the cleaning of the house, or be terribly particular about the state of cleanliness _in _the house, so long as she wasn't choking on the dust. The servants are all part-time and, though they do a good job, they normally would not be doing so much, not at once, and Ikuko wouldn't ask them to.

This is the first time she's ever had a visitor. This is the first time that someone who doesn't work for Ikuko has set foot in her house, in all the time that she's lived there. Even Ikuko, who doesn't even much like the idea of entertaining visitors—indeed, she's never had any on purpose; though she was discouraged from making much of her presence here, no one ever told her she couldn't make friends and have visitors over—doesn't want her new boarder to find anything amiss with his prospective home.

_Let's see. The guest bedroom on the second floor has been cleaned and aired out. The bed linens have been washed. We got him a few changes of clothes from one of the stores back in town; not too many, in case they didn't fit. But the coat seems to fit him reasonably well, so the clothes Hatsuna-san and I got should fit him as well. Now all that's left is to see if he likes it._

_I don't think my pride could take the wounds if he didn't. God knows Hatsuna-san and Kaname-san would probably die from the indignation. Maybe Yoko-san and the others as well._

When Ikuko reaches the point where the pavement ends and the road turns to loose gravel, she is quickly drawn back to reality.

An odd sound comes from Ikuko's left; it sounds a bit like the sound a cat makes when someone steps down hard on their tail, but muted. She looks over at Toya, and slams on the brakes the moment she gets a good look at his face.

"Don't do that!" he snaps, but the moment the car comes to a stop, he bolts out of the door, sitting down on the wiry grass and breathing hard. Ikuko follows.

His face is absolutely bloodless and stretched as tight as taut piano strings. Toya seems to be having trouble breathing; he's gasping like a man who's just run a marathon. He looks, for all the world, as though he's just had a brush with a terrifying death.

"Toya… What on Earth?" Ikuko says blankly, staring down at him with her brow furrowed.

After a moment, the young man lifts his slightly wild blue eyes to Ikuko. "Does it _have _to do that?" he gasps.

"Do what?"

"_Shake_," Toya mutters, staring down at the ground with his knees hugged to his chest.

Ikuko stares at him, eyebrows raised. There comes to mind the urge to give some sort of sardonic retort, but nothing comes to her—and honestly, something tells Ikuko that those jibes wouldn't have their intended effect this time.

Toya seems to have some sort of phobia against the way a car shakes when it's being driven over uneven ground, or maybe just shaking vehicles in general. This is… This is very interesting. _I must remember to write this down as well. Since there's nothing in his life since he woke up that could lead to this sort of phobia, I can only conclude that it's a holdover from before he lost his memories. What could have caused this? Some sort of trauma? Interesting, very interesting._

She folds her arms about her chest for warmth; it really is quite cold out here. "Yes, Toya, it does. Look, we've only got about another mile to go before we get to my house; just get back in the car. Nothing's going to happen to you," Ikuko points out, summoning a gentle smile. "I'm not going to let you walk the rest of the way there," she goes on more firmly. "Not when you've never been there before." _At least not in a conscious state._

After a few more moments of straining to catch his breath, and seemingly weighing his options, Toya nods, and gets back in the car. He sits like a glass doll the whole time, rigid and unmoving, and Ikuko can practically taste his relief when she pulls up into the driveway and he can get out and stand on solid earth again.

Ikuko's lip twitches in a thin smile as she does the same, and goes up to unlock the front door. Any information gathered about him is a good thing.

* * *

Since this is a more a slice-of-life story than anything else, the chapters will probably end up being of wildly varying lengths. They'll be as long as they need to be, is what I'm saying.


	7. Ghost in the Window

_Ghost in the Window_

* * *

It's another overcast afternoon. The record playing on the record player has finished all of its songs, and the only sound is that of the booming tide and the faint, melancholy cries of ocean birds. Toya has been reading one of Ikuko's books, but now, he lays it down, frowning and leaning back in his chair. The silence really is… It really is quite profound.

Toya has been living in the home of Hachijo Ikuko for three days now, and he still finds himself sorting out his many different thoughts about this place, and the mistress of the house.

For the first minute or so after Ikuko finally stopped the car, Toya was too preoccupied with the utter relief of being back on solid, unmoving ground to notice the sort of house they had pulled up in front of. He's not sure if it was some sort of vertigo that had overtaken him, but when that car started to shake, he was consumed by black fear and his stomach turned so violently that he was sure he would be sick.

_God, that was awful. I swear the car was going to turn over at any second. You know what? I think vehicles like that are just overrated. From now on, I'm just going to walk everywhere. That should be fine._

_I guess this fear is some sort of clue to who I used to be—God knows nothing's happened to me since I woke up that would make me feel that bad when the car shakes. But you know, I don't think I would ever gladly go back into a car to try to figure out just how it connects me to my past._

Of course, eventually Toya was able to gather his breath and calm his racing heart, and he did stand, and drink in the sight of the great place looming before him.

In calling this place a "house", most would believe that Ikuko was either being modest or a master of the understatement. Toya will take a third option from the way he's seen her behave, and guess that it's just in her nature to regard a place this big to be a normal "house."

A more accurate description of the house would be to call it a small mansion—an insanely large living space for just one person, and frankly, hardly any less insane when the number of people living there rises to two. Toya has taken the time to explore this house since he has lived here, and he thinks he can give a reasonably accurate description of the layout.

There is the genkan, all neat and proper, a traditional Japanese touch to a house that otherwise looks neither traditional nor very Japanese. The only other nod to proper Japanese culture is that whoever built this house didn't have either the upstairs nor downstairs bathroom or toilet in the same room. Frankly, the touches seem a little bit out of place.

There are two storeys. On the ground floor, there is a large, spacious kitchen. In the kitchen, there is a small eating area; there is also a dining room with a large table set to accommodate a maximum of twelve people. There is the spacious living room with its many couches surrounding a coffee table, and its many chairs set up at different points around the room; the living room boasts a television and a record player. Off to the side from living room, through a small door, there is a smaller sitting room, where Toya suspects Ikuko would entertain individual guests. That room has the distinct air of being rarely used—then again, so do a lot of the rooms here.

There are entirely too many bedrooms here, on both floors. There's Ikuko's study, where Toya can only assume she's shut up now—he's seen neither hide nor hair of her since breakfast. And, glory of glories, there is on the first floor a great library filled to the brim and overflowing with books.

What sort of books, do you ask? Well, any books you like; Ikuko has them all. Most of these books appear to be quite as old as well; Toya wouldn't be surprised if at least half of them were a century old and first editions as well.

_Toya doesn't see the look of prideful, smirking satisfaction that comes over Ikuko's face when he pokes his head into the library. For himself, he's a bit busy breaking into a wide grin and discovering just how deep this instinctive love of books of his runs._

"_Ikuko?"_

"_Yes, Toya?"  
_

"_I think I'm gonna like living here."_

_At this, Ikuko laughs a quiet, faintly derisive, but not mean-spirited laugh. "You're making that judgment just from having seen the library? My, but you are impulsive."_

Beneath all of this, however, Toya is able to see, just able to see certain points where the landscape he's presented with puts cracks in Ikuko's façade.

This house of hers is grand and richly furnished, but the furnishings themselves seem a little… _old. _The furniture, the lamps, the curtains and wall hangings, all the figurines and little odds and ends made to adorn the house and give it a more homey feeling, they all seem too old for the owner. They seem like the sort of things that would sit in the grand old mansion of an elderly woman, or antiques ready to sell at an auction.

Obviously, Toya doesn't know Ikuko's age. He tried to ask once, and she started twitching like crazy. _"Toya, while your curiosity is a sure sign that you do not want to go ignorant of the world, may I kindly ask you to _never _ask that question again?" she asked tensely. _He doesn't know her age, but she can't be that much older than him—her hair sports not a single touch of gray (and there's no hair dye anywhere—Toya's checked) and her skin is completely unlined. No lines even form around her mouth or eyes when she smiles.

And though Ikuko _is _the sort of woman to tease and jibe incessantly, to carelessly refer to the small mansion she lives in as a mere "house", and the sort of woman who thinks nothing of not coming out of a certain room in her house from dawn until dusk, Toya's not sure she's the sort of woman to furnish her home entirely in antique furniture.

There is also about this house a not-so-faint air of neglect.

Oh, nothing can be said against the people who work to maintain this house. Ikuko employs four servants, whom Toya met when three days ago when he first set foot here. And frankly, considering that all four of them are part-time employees, Toya can't tell whether the fact that Ikuko refers to them as "servants" is a sign of her being conceited, or is just a telltale sign of what he's now clear was a wealthy, sheltered upbringing.

There's Maruyama Hatsuna, who is given money to buy groceries and take any clothes or bed linens that need to be dry cleaned to the appropriate dry cleaners. In other words, she's the go-to person when errands need to be done. She is cheerful and constantly smiling, humming slightly as she works.

There's Kichida Yoko, who dusts the shelves and windowsills and what-have-you, vacuum the ground floor, and Toya gets the impression that she sometimes helps out with the cooking as well. Ikuko may have muttered something about _"being old enough to cook for myself" _with a faint look of beleaguered pride on her face, but Yoko did mention being good in the kitchen. Yoko is the oldest of the servants, getting on in years. She is cheerful as well, but in a quieter way; her smiles not quite so open.

There's Takahashi Harumi, a young woman who comes by twice a week to clean the windows, polish the shelves, and vacuum the upper floor. Being the youngest, she seems to try to present herself as a serious sort of person, trying her best to be diligent.

And there's Okada Kaname, the only man Ikuko employs. He attends the flower bushes in the front yard and anything else that has to do with the outside. Toya's seen him the least out of the four, since this isn't really the time of year for the maintenance of the outside of the house to be considered terribly important.

Something Toya noticed immediately when he was properly introduced to them was that Ikuko, frankly, seems far more comfortable around them than pretty much any other person he's seen her talk to. Yes, she spoke to the doctors and the nurses she would encounter in the hospital while visiting him, but only in the most distant way. It was painfully obvious to anyone, even Toya, that she just wanted whatever sort of conversation she was having with the newest stranger to pass the door to end. She didn't bother to hide it. Indeed, she may not have even known how.

There is still some level of distance between Ikuko and these people. He supposes there has to be; it's long been said that in employer-employee relationships, familiarity breeds contempt. But Ikuko isn't so plainly awkward when it comes to conversing with her own "servants." Her speech comes across as considerably less contrived; she doesn't hide behind her painted smiles and her long words quite as much.

Toya isn't sure how Ikuko prompted her employees to behave around him, or if she even prompted them at all. They call him "Toya-san" with a smile or a reserved dip of the head, and are never terribly open with him, always just a little guarded. For the most part, if Yoko or Harumi are cleaning while Toya's in the same room as one of them, they'll ignore him.

_Where was I? _he thinks to himself, lip twitching slightly in a wry sort of way. _The forgetful amnesiac; how fitting. Must remember not to ever let Ikuko see me struggling to remember something I just started thinking about five minutes ago. She hasn't gotten any better about the teasing since I left the hospital._

Oh, yes. Just bringing his eyes about to look on the great, cavern-like living room, Toya can't help but see the air of neglect clinging to the walls and making the shine from the polished tables seem just a little dull.

The majority of the house seems barely lived-in; the only exceptions are the library, Ikuko's study, and the bedroom Toya got a brief glimpse of, the bedroom he's assuming is hers. While he has smelled no mildew and seen no mold, has seen no sign of mice or other vermin, has detected no hint of active decay, this house still seems like a slowly dying thing.

There are stacks of papers on the coffee table, a mixture of old newspapers and bills and other things that Toya has yet to identify. It's cluttered. Not dirty, just untidy. Ikuko has probably instructed her employees not to move these papers, because they are neat enough that, otherwise, Toya knows he would be able to see the surface of the coffee table.

The soft, cushioned armchairs situated by the windows are faded from prolonged exposure to sunlight. What was once an undoubtedly rich, vivid deep blue is now roughly the same shade as a pair of blue jeans after three dozen washings and a summer spent working in the sun. The gold brocade is now a pale, barely visible butter yellow.

Sand litters the wide, spacious, awning-shaded back porch, and though Ikuko's property empties out into the ocean and her porch boasts an incredible view, there are no tables or chairs on the back porch, aside from an old rocking chair. Just a light dusting of sand that no one has bothered to sweep away in an eternity, since it always comes back.

Ikuko has the same air about her. Something both dignified and faintly decaying; proud, very proud, but the old newspapers gathering dust on the coffee table betray the carelessness both of the house and of Ikuko herself. She cares far more for her books and whatever it is she does in her study all day than for what goes on outside.

It's like time ceases to a halt altogether when one steps through the front door; if it weren't for the fact that the clocks work in here and the changing weather indicates that the house is likely _not _caught in a time loop, Toya would think that time stops for anything within the vicinity of this house. This isn't a place where people find themselves. It's a place where people lose themselves thanks to the sheer isolation.

_I've heard people drive past the road… twice, maybe three times, in all the time that I've been here; not counting Yoko-san and the others, anyway. I suppose that, when it's warm out, people come and vacation here. It's the beach, after all; there's always vacationers at a beach in summer. But it's deserted right now. Just me and Ikuko, and her "servants."_

_When the record player isn't going or there isn't a cassette in the cassette player, and if the T.V. isn't on, there's no sound anywhere. No sound except the ocean and a few birds. I had no idea silence could be so profound. I had no idea how consuming it could be._

_Silence provides the perfect venue for thought, but only if you have the ability to resist the urge to drown it out with mindless activity._

_I haven't figured out anything about myself except what I do and the way I instinctively react to some things. I know I like books. I know I don't like it when the car shakes. I know that it stings my pride when I'm teased, so I do my best not to be caught off-guard in front of Ikuko. I know I'm not an early riser—I haven't woken up before nine even once. And I know I like the smell of salt air and the ocean._

_Maybe I'm just afraid of the headaches. _He still gets those blinding jolts of pain when he tries, in earnest, to remember anything about himself. It's odd. When Toya is fantasizing absently, thinking of something that, surely, couldn't be true, there's no pain at all, but when he focuses his mind seriously on the task, it's like driving a needle in between his eyes.

_That's a lousy reason not to be wondering who I am. All I've got are a handful of experiences and a cobbled name; half of it wasn't even mine to start with. I shouldn't give up just because my head hurts every time I try to remember._

Suddenly, there comes a small sound from near Toya's feet.

_What… What is that?_

At first, Toya doesn't fix his eyes on the source of the noise. Instead, he contemplates without ever looking for what he heard—a lapse in logic that he's sure Ikuko would never let him live down, if she knew. It's a small, chirrupy noise accompanied by what sounds like tiny footfalls. _A fairy? _He wonders whimsically. _Or some sort of troll? Maybe a ghost has come to spirit me away._

No, it's not a fairy. Nor is it a troll, or a ghost. Finally, Toya looks down, and sees the source of the noise. A long-haired, solid black cat with electric blue eyes, staring up at him. The cat's gaze is decidedly appraising, as though the creature is weighing whether the presence of this newcomer should be tolerated or not.

For a moment, he just meets the cat's calm gaze and stares. Then, it clicks.

"So… You're the elusive Bernkastel."

"_Oh."_

_Ikuko has shown Toya to what will be his room here, and is about to leave, when she turns back around, some stray emotion tugging at her lip. "How do you feel about cats?"_

What? _Frowning bemusedly at her, Toya shrugs his shoulders. He's not entirely sure what to make of that completely random question. Nothing she's said up to this point has suggested a question like this, but considering it's Ikuko, that might be the point. "Okay… I don't mind them." Toya hasn't really had enough experience with cats to have much of an opinion of them either way._

_Oddly enough, Ikuko seems pleased with this. The tugging on her lip widens to a real smile, though no less thin-lipped and catlike than it normally is. "Good. I have a cat here named Bernkastel. You will meet her eventually, when she feels like introducing herself to you."_

"You know," Toya muses out loud, his eyes still fixed on the cat, whose fluffy tale, once swishing gently, comes to rest over her front paws, "it makes entirely too much sense for Ikuko to own a cat. She is just the sort of person who would own a cat. She even smiles like one. If she was a character in a book, making her a cat owner would be an unforgivable cliché on the part of the author."

Predictably, Bernkastel does not answer. She sits like a furry little statue, still scanning him up and down. Frankly, Toya gets the feeling that he's being judged, and that if he's found lacking, he's going to get kicked out of the house or something.

Eventually, deciding he's going to have to break the standoff, Toya reaches down to pet the cat. He scratches at the cat's silken ears, hoping that this sign of affection on his part will win him the cat's acceptance. _Come on, kitty. Your owner let me live here, but I don't think it's going to really be my home unless the local pet cat accepts me too._

Bernkastel doesn't pull away or try to swat or bite him as he pets her. She accepts Toya's hand on her soft fur with good grace, though also with the distinct air of accepting this only because she must. After a few seconds, the cat reaches her limit and slides away from Toya, going to sit in the deep windowsill near his chair. She just stares into her reflection, never hissing or spitting or even pawing at the wall, just staring.

For a moment, Toya looks at the window too, wondering what on Earth could be so fascinating about it that it would have the cat's full attention, but after a split-second of staring, he tears his eyes away abruptly.

Harumi has a tendency to wash the windows so clean that they sparkle, and in windows that clean, Toya can just as easily see his reflection in the glass as he can the world beyond.

He doesn't like it.

Toya avoids looking into mirrors, or too closely into anything that could show him his face. He sees it, a visage made up of badly tanned skin, stark white hair so coarse and so brittle from hasty bleaching that it resembles a patch of grass in the driest summer. He sees blue eyes, bright even when staring back through a poor medium of glass, and Toya turns away.

It's like looking at the face of a stranger. There's so much disconnect that looking on his face makes his stomach turn. He sees his reflection, and is barely able to feel as though this is his face. _It should be different. I don't know why I think that, but I feel as though it should be different. It shouldn't look this way. It should look like…_

All the world goes white for one agonizing second. Toya's hands go up to clutch at his head, and when the pain vanishes he slumps back in his chair, weak and gasping.

_Just leave it alone. _He re-opens the book on his lap, and starts where he left off. _Just leave it alone for now._


	8. Trial and Error

_Trial and Error_

* * *

Ikuko stares at the mess of utensils and bowls laid out before her, at the remains of the latest meal rejected with an apologetic "_Sorry, Ikuko; I just don't like it." _She still maintains the confidence she had at the beginning that she would accomplish exactly what she set out to do. To give up now would just be utterly unworthy of her; she wouldn't be able to look herself in the mirror if she just gave up.

But really, this is starting to get a little wearing, and Ikuko is starting to get bored as she always does if she goes too long without being able to do something different.

Toya has been living here for long enough that Ikuko supposes it's high time she figure out what he likes to eat. Oh yes, he accepts whatever's made for him to eat, but Ikuko suspects—no, she _knows_, knows from the lack of enthusiasm with which he eats half of those meals and from her own confident mind—that Toya has eaten a lot of those meals only because it would be impolite to refuse it.

They simply must find something that Toya genuinely likes to eat, something _besides _cup ramen and macaroni and cheese. For one thing, man can not subsist on ramen and macaroni alone; this is the truth. For another, Ikuko knows that if she can find a dish that Toya likes, it might have had some sort of emotional connection for him in the past, and might help to jump-start his memory. For another…

Quite frankly, Ikuko has a hard time enjoying a meal if the one eating with her doesn't enjoy it too. The whole balance of the eating process is thrown clean off its axis if everyone does not enjoy their meals equally. If she ever wants to properly enjoy supper again, Ikuko knows she's going to have to find _something _Toya genuinely likes. Something other than ramen and macaroni. She's not eating that every night.

"I don't understand why I can't help," Toya remarks for what must be the thousandth time (at least in Ikuko's mind). He's hovering a little ways off from where Ikuko struggles with a saucepot and a spoon and Yoko stands ready, smiling a twitching, secretly amused smile, to assist her. His brow is furrowed in concern; anyone can see that he does genuinely want to be of use.

Ikuko's not going to have that.

The smile Ikuko adopts is noticeably strained and, in light of her furrowed brow and scarlet cheeks, couldn't pass for real even among the blind. "That's perfectly alright, Toya. Besides, you haven't the slightest idea of how to operate these devices. If you want to learn how to cook, we'll cover that another night."

A hurt look passes over Toya's face, but Ikuko doesn't see it. She's only relieved when he leaves, going to wait in the living room. Ikuko would really rather Toya didn't see her with bits of food and flour caught fast in her hair. Ikuko would rather he didn't have that sort of image of her in his head.

_Still, he might feel more comfortable with being open with me if I don't seem so distant. Even if I do look horrible_—her hair knotted in a haphazard bun, apron tied over her dress, sleeves rolled up and forearms covered in tomato paste—_like this, he might feel better about being open with me, and I would be able to glean more information from him. That is, if he's hiding anything from me._

…_No!_

But then, vanity wins out.

_No one must see me like this, especially not Toya, who lives with me! He would never take me seriously again if he saw a chunk of fruit came up and hit me on the face; no one would. I can barely stand having Yoko-san here to see this._

"How do the potatoes look, Yoko-san?" Ikuko asks tiredly, once she's sure they're alone.

Yoko shakes her head. "It'll be another fifteen minutes before they're ready, Madam." A silent _'Be patient' _is added to her words, but it stays silent, and for that, Ikuko is grateful. She doesn't want to hear anyone telling her to be patient about _anything_ in the sort of patronizing tone of voice they inevitably use. Especially not right now.

Ikuko supposes that she is a rarity among upper-class women, in that she can actually cook. She's not a _supreme _chef, not in any sense of the word, but she can cook well enough to make meals for herself (and Toya, nowadays), if the dish in question isn't overly complicated. There is a reason for that, as it turns out.

"_Teach me how to cook, Yoko-san."_

_When making a request like that, most people would at least addend it with a please, or better yet, make "please" the very first word out of their mouth. Addressing someone in such a firm, almost defensive manner isn't likely to make them amenable to what undoubtedly would be such a difficult thing—under most circumstances._

_Yet Yoko has been complaining about feeling as though the only reason she's here is to fill the roster ("After all," she remarked once to Harumi. "You do all the same things I do."). Ikuko has no doubt that Yoko never intended for her to hear her say that; it was pure coincidence that she happened to be within earshot when Yoko was confiding this in a long-suffering Harumi. _Well, if she wants to feel useful, I have no doubt this will keep her occupied for a few weeks.

_Yoko looks up from her dusting, surprise making the omnipresent furrows on her brow seem deeper. She looks Ikuko over as though she's not sure what she just heard. "Madam?"_

_Ikuko resists the nearly overwhelming urge to make some jibe about Yoko's inattention. As a child, her mother always told her that she shouldn't' snark at people whom courtesy forbids from snarking back. _"You shouldn't use sarcasm when speaking with your servants. It's rather like bullying them," _she had said, and when Ikuko thought about it, it made sense. Best not to spark resentment in the people who clean your house—otherwise, they might start doing a less thorough job of cleaning than they usually would to spite you._

That was probably the only useful thing Mother ever said to me.

"_Teach me how to cook, Yoko-san," Ikuko repeats herself, smiling her best "Yes, I am completely serious; now do what I say" smile._

_Recently, Ikuko has started to get a bit paranoid. What if, for some reason, she was suddenly in the position that Yoko or the others wouldn't be able to come here anymore? Certainly, Ikuko supposes she could get by as far as keeping the house clean goes; cleaning can't be that hard, can it? And it wouldn't be that bad to just go and get groceries for herself, but what would Ikuko do when it came time to cook?_

_Perhaps the idea that she would not be _totally _self-sufficient in times of crisis is a little more worrying to Ikuko than it would be to other people. But she really would like to learn how to cook._

_Yoko nods and smiles as though she has every right to refuse Ikuko if she wishes, and she does—in theory. "Of course, Madam." Yoko has children, so she's probably received requests like this one before; she certainly seems to know how to handle them, speaking smoothly. "I will be ready whenever you wish to begin."_

It's a potato dish, potatoes with a sauce made of tomato paste, and other things that Ikuko has since forgotten about; all the bottles are still sitting out on the counter.

It should not be this wearing on the nerves. Maybe that's because Ikuko's still inexperienced with cooking. Maybe it's because Ikuko absolutely must be the best at everything she does, and if this doesn't come out looking absolutely perfect, she's probably going to scrap everything and start over with something different, even if it would have tasted the same. Maybe it's because she's just getting bored again, as she inevitably does with anything that isn't related to writing or reading.

_He had better like this one._

"Remember to stir the sauce, Madam. It will burn if you don't keep stirring."

Ikuko nods, forcing herself not to grimace. As easy as it is for her to fall into the abyss of ennui, it still rankles to be _caught _not paying attention to something.

When the potatoes are done, Ikuko ladles the sauce over it. _'Coat the potatoes evenly with the sauce. Serve any leftover sauce as an appetizer or side dish.' _She frowns. _I don't want any to be leftover; may as well use all of it. _As a result, when she's done, what she and Yoko have made looks more hills of tomato sauce than something that is supposed to be primarily potatoes.

"It doesn't look anything like the picture in the cookbook," Ikuko muses. The illustration for this recipe shows something pretty and neat, and this—this is just a mess. A great, big, tomato-splattered mess. She closes her eyes and sighs deeply. "It's probably not any good. I should just get rid of it and—"

"No! No!" At the risk of sounding discourteous, Yoko puts up her hands in alarm and stands between Ikuko and the trash can. Ikuko looks out the window and understands. It's past dark; at this time of night, Yoko probably wants to be home with her family, not toiling away in the kitchen feeding someone else. _Toya's probably getting hungry too. _"It's perfectly fine, Madam. The dish isn't going to look exactly the same as it does in a cookbook. Those were all photos taken of dishes made by master chefs and—"

Ikuko glares at her, and Yoko realizes that she probably shouldn't have used the term "dishes made by master chefs" in comparison to Ikuko's own creation. "It's perfectly fine," she backtracks. "I'm sure it will taste just fine."

Gradually, thoughts of dumping what she's made in the trash can and starting over with something else fade from Ikuko's mind. It… It really is very late. She's getting tired. Yoko probably wants to go home. Toya might be asleep on the couch by now. She doesn't know where Bernkastel is. Ikuko is quite ready to be done with this, and God knows she won't be done soon if she decides to start over.

_I give up. This is the last thing I'm making tonight. I just hope he likes it. I think that my pride would be completely, utterly crushed—just smashed, like someone had knocked a priceless old vase off of its pedestal—if I toiled all this time and Toya didn't like _anything _that I made for him._

…_Oh, and I suppose Yoko-san wouldn't like it too much either._

Ikuko nods. "Alright. You can go home now, Yoko-san," she tells her helper.

"Do you want me to stay and clean the dishes?"

Anyone with ears can tell Yoko's just saying that out of obligation. Ikuko shakes her head. "No. Let's leave that for tomorrow."

Yoko dips her head and leaves, her shoes making swift "clip-clops" on the cool tile floor. At the same time, Ikuko sticks her head out of the kitchen door and calls in the direction of the living room: "You can come back in now, Toya."

After a few moments, Toya comes loping back in, hands stuffed in his pockets; there's no sign, as Ikuko had feared, that he might have fallen asleep waiting for her. He looks her over warily. "Feeling better?"

Ikuko tilts her head. "What? Oh, never mind. It's ready." She nods towards the kitchen table, where the potato dish is waiting, on two plates with the casserole dish it was made in sitting the middle.

At this, the wariness melts away from Toya's face to be replaced with eagerness. Even if they've been having trouble finding foods that he does like, he does seem to like to eat. _The ever-healthy appetite of a young man, _Ikuko thinks to herself, sitting down at the table.

Before they start eating, Toya looks up and frowns at her. "Ikuko… I'm sorry to say this, but you're a mess."

_Oh, you had to say it, didn't you? _Ikuko's face goes scarlet. She supposes she does look rather unkempt the way she is now, hair in a bun and apron still tied over her dress, flour on her face and neck. "Toya…" The smile gleaming out from her teeth is positively murderous "…please don't attack my vanity. It's all a woman has, at times, and I am rather possessive of it."

Toya smiles a small smile and looks down at his plate, lip still twitching. "Sure."

They eat in silence—Ikuko doesn't know about Toya, but she is just now noticing hunger that must have been gnawing away at her stomach for an hour at least, and to eat now is a great relief. _I think it turned out rather well, _she muses, satisfied with her work. _The flavor's even, and the garlic isn't overpowering. But there is that metal tang from the tomatoes. The recipe called for fresh tomatoes; well, where on Earth am I supposed to find _fresh _tomatoes at this time of the year, without them being exorbitantly expensive?_

_All in all, I think it's good. _Ikuko looks up, staring intently at Toya's face to gauge his reaction. _Now if only…_

Toya has not said a word. Instead, he chews slowly, seemingly weighing his opinion of the taste in his mind (Or maybe he's debating the merit of honesty versus not making Ikuko have a nervous breakdown). It's almost as though he's deliberately keeping his emotions off of his face.

"Well?" Ikuko demands tensely.

The young man puts his fork down, clasping his hands tightly. "Well…" Ikuko can see the cogs whirling behind Toya's eyes, as he attempts to summon an answer. "…It's got an… _interesting _taste."

Ikuko bites her lip, and doesn't care how pathetic she must look.

Toya winces and squeezes his eyes shut. "…But it's just not for me," he finishes gingerly.

This is about the moment when Ikuko's head hits the table, pillowed on her arms. _Not again… This was the third thing tonight… Not again. Why can't I find anything he likes to eat? Why is it that he'll eat cup ramen and macaroni and cheese and things like that with abandon, but doesn't like _real, homemade _meals? Why? Why must I always fail? Why?_

Toya reaches over the table, uncaring of propriety, to pat Ikuko's shoulder gently. "I'm sure it's really good, Ikuko; I just don't like it. Listen, I'll just go put some ramen in the microwave, and we can start over tomorrow."

Ikuko doesn't answer.

She thinks she's going to sleep here tonight. Ikuko doesn't think she could face her bed (or her cat) for the shame of having failed, yet again.


	9. all the shades of winter

Sorry it's been so long since I updated, everyone. I had exams, but they're over now, and I am free until August.

* * *

_all the shades of winter_

* * *

Ikuko had rented a movie, a movie with the sort of plot that Toya can't help but wonder if her choice had been some sort of jab against him. Then again, given Ikuko's personality, it's just as likely that she didn't consider the way Toya would feel about it at all. Toya wouldn't put it past her to choose any movie she thought looked interesting without considering whether her "boarder" would be alright with the content.

It was a movie about an amnesiac's journey towards regaining his memory, aided by a young nurse at the asylum he was staying at—_that, _of course, degenerated into a budding romance between patient and nurse with frightening speed. Whether the protagonist ever regained his memories or got together with the nurse, Toya doesn't know; he walked out about halfway through.

_Toya gets up from the couch, feeling his face burning and something clawing at the inside of his throat. His stomach churns, his head aches, and he can't watch any more of this._

_Still sitting on the couch, face half-veiled, Ikuko turns away from the too-bright screen of the television. She's all black and white, the high points of her face white as snow and the depressions black as India ink. Her lips crease in an uncertain frown. "Toya, what…"_

"_I'm tired," Toya announces cagily, casting his eyes towards the staircase._

"_At eight o'clock?" Ikuko's frown shifts to a smile that, in the eerie, flickering, faintly blue light, could almost be called sinister. "Is the weather getting to you? Don't tell me you're going to hibernate, like a great brown bear. You don't really have the belly for that, Toya."_

_Toya ignores that. "Good night, Ikuko," he answers her shortly, and walks away, all too eager to go to a place where he can't hear the voice of a man trying to reclaim his life._

Last night was a bitterly cold night, spent wrapped under blankets and quilts with a space heater not far away, and this morning is a bitterly cold, gray morning. Sitting on his bed, staring out the window, Toya listens to the wind batter on the glass panes and the surf of a sea as gray as the sky crash against sand and rock. The space heater offers him some soft, watery warmth, but he's wearing a thick sweater and wool socks and is as covered by thick quilts and blankets as he was the night before.

The cold still gets to him, even through all of that.

Toya doesn't care if the protagonist ever got his memories back. In fact, given the overall, wistful-but-still-hopeful tone of the movie, Toya doesn't care because he's sure the protagonist did get his memories back. Snap. Poof. Just like that. One moment of clarity, and it all came flooding back. Toya wishes it could be like that for him, but he knows that in real life, it's not that simple.

Toya doesn't care if the protagonist and the nurse got together either. He does consider that in real life that sort of romantic subplot would not have worked very well—Toya's pretty sure there's something illegal or at least morally inappropriate about a nurse getting into a relationship with a patient. Either way, it's not the sort of thing considered admirable behavior in real life. He doesn't care. Even having not seen all of it, he knows that movie didn't need a romantic subplot, would have been perfectly fine, perhaps even better, without it. It was only there to satisfy a "demographic."

He doesn't care about that movie at all. He doesn't. Well, except for the part where he does.

He wants to believe that Ikuko hadn't been thinking when she grabbed that movie at the rental place. For all that she's possessed of a stunningly intellectual mind, when it comes to people, Ikuko really isn't all that smart sometimes. She's not that smart about people, not all the time.

Sometimes, she just doesn't know where to stop with her teasing of him—well, more that some of her biting little observations and assertions were just in horribly bad taste. Ikuko eats when _she _wants to eat, and Toya is usually content to be strong-armed into eating with her, even if he isn't hungry, but he does notice the behavior. And then there's that habit of Ikuko's, of locking herself in her study for hours on end and leaving Toya to his own devise, leaving him to entertain himself, sometimes for the whole day.

Toya will be the first to admit that he's no expert in discerning what constitutes polite behavior. He gets a rough idea from the books he's read, and Toya will also admit that "book learning" in this particular field is probably hopelessly insufficient. She isn't the height of polite decorum, though. Just a little off, just a little too gracious at points, or a little too pushy at others, or entirely too reclusive.

Maybe it's an instinct left over from his past life. Maybe Toya was some sort of connoisseur of politeness in his past life. _I'd hate to think I was such a stuck-up person that I would nitpick people's manners. It's a possibility though, I guess._

Toya tells himself that he shouldn't care about Ikuko's ways, not when she was so generous as to open her home to him. The sense of finding her creepy as he had when he first met her has all but vanished, only asserting itself on occasion. Toya wants to believe Ikuko's a good, eccentric person who just doesn't recognize when she's gone too far, so…

"_If you do remember anything more, feel free to tell me. Anything you can recall will be helpful to helping you find out who you are."_

Toya starts to wonder, though, exactly what is the point of that?

A seagull gives a lonely, piercing cry, and Toya's lip twitches downward slightly. He supposes that in a well-kept city or in a warmer climate than this, even winter would be a riot of color. Here, though, it's just gray, all the color sapped away by the fading sun. Gray ocean, gray sky, white sand made gray in this light, dry, brown grass gray when the sun hasn't risen. It's like staring at a black and white photograph; if not for the constant ebb and flow of the ocean, Toya would be sure he wasn't really looking at the world. He—

No. No, this isn't right; Toya needs to keep his mind focused on the task at hand. _And I'm not going to let the headaches stop me, _he tells his mind irritably, _so don't bother with your _other _defense mechanism either. I don't want to have to deal with that. This is important. I don't want to have to deal with that._

He supposes that the matter of who he was is an important one. When he had first woken up and realized that his mind was a blank slate, Toya had wracked his brains for an answer. Any bit of information he could salvage, any bit of lagan about his life, he would have been grateful for it. Despite the splitting pain that would shoot up and down in his head, Toya still thought and struggled, and all he'd gotten for his efforts was a vague suggestion that his age was eighteen years, and that he liked to read, especially mystery novels.

All efforts since then have been fruitless; Toya has only been met with pain, and no results. Eventually, the pain of even trying to remember scared him off from searching, even though Toya fears the consequences of apathy and ignorance, fears the consequences of not thinking.

But really, what is the point?

Before he lost his memory, he could have been anyone. He could have been rich or poor, a student or a worker. Toya supposes that he could have been a fisherman on a fishing boat; if his boat had capsized during a storm, that might explain how he had ended up here. He might have even been a pirate, complete with an oversized hat with a jaunty feather. Toya almost smiles; the idea of being an old-fashioned pirate is oddly appealing.

Then there comes a jolt of pain.

_Ack… _A hand shoots up to rub his forehead; Toya grimaces, squeezing his eyes shut. _Good God, let me finish. _The pain subsides enough that he can open his eyes, and his grimace morphs into a deep frown.

He could have been married. He could have had a family. It's just as likely that he didn't, but the thought that he might have makes Toya think that he'd be an awful sort of person to just abandon them. _But if I've got a family, how can I search for them? _he wonders, frustrated. _How can I go back to them? I don't even know what my name was before everything went blank. How can I possibly return to a family I don't remember?_

_I can't just force myself to remember. That's a plot device in a movie; answers don't come so easily in real life._

_I suppose that if I was a character in a movie, my memory problems would be solved in about ninety minutes. There would just be this moment of revelation, some moment of clarity, and everything would come rushing back. Everything would be fine from there—no one ever seems to talk about the consequences of losing your memories for a long time and then getting them back. That would probably be about where the story ended, in fact._

_Real-life amnesia doesn't get wrapped up in ninety minutes. Summing up my whole life in such a cold way would be an insult. It would be beyond insulting, in fact; it would be cold and cruel, it would snuff out everything that made me "me" for the sake of an entertaining story._

_I guess that amnesiacs in movies are always really happy when they get their memories back. After all, they've just spent the whole movie wandering around as empty shells. They didn't bother trying to build a new life, didn't try to form connections with the world around them in their temporary identity. They had nothing to be afraid of when they got their memories back. They hadn't built up a new life. They didn't have to be afraid of losing themselves to their old selves._

_I'm just scared, I guess._

That's the rub. Toya's frightened, as much as he doesn't want to be, as much as it offends his pride as a man to be frightened of his own shadowed past. He might start to remember, and it would turn out that he was a completely different man. It might turn out that he was not a good man. It might turn out that he was someone whom Toya would be ashamed to call "himself." Or maybe it would all turn out okay and Toya's just a coward, but at times like this, it's probably better to think realistically.

_If I have a family, then I'm sorry. I don't mean that in a sarcastic or insincere way, either. I really am sorry. I'm a lousy son-brother-father-husband-whatever to leave them in the lurch when they're probably worried sick. But I don't know who they are, okay? I can't remember their names, I can't remember their faces. I can't remember anything about them—not the way they smelled or sounded, nothing. How am I supposed to go on this great, emotionally cathartic quest for lost kin if I don't even know who they are? If I don't even know who _I _am?_

_And I don't know if I'm ever going to be able to remember anything else._

Toya knows… Toya knows that there's a very good chance that this is going to be as good as it ever gets. This isn't some cheap ninety-minute flick; he can't just force himself to remember and be done with it. There is no cheap, easy cure for what's wrong with him, and in light of that, Toya has to wonder what the point is in attempting to remember.

He'll build a life, a new life. Maybe it will be a small one, maybe it won't be anything grand, but Toya refuses to sit around passively as a still-blank slate and just _wait _for his memories to come back. Even if he never leads anything but a small, sheltered life, it will be _his _life, with his own experiences and choices. His life, as Hachijo Toya, not as some nameless creature casting about for his name back.

Even knowing the cold, Toya casts off the layers of blankets and starts for the door. The gray light at his back, he tells himself two things:

First, that he should just forgive Ikuko for that movie, and two, that he'll live completely as Toya from now on, and stop trying to grasp at a past that's been locked away.


	10. The Morning Sun

_The Morning Sun_

* * *

As it's chilly inside, it's bitterly cold outside, something not helped by the fierce shore side wind, by the sand that comes up to hit him on the face, by the soft sea foam that makes his face and hair damp. Toya adjusts his scarf and his coat collar to soften the blows of the wind, his shoes crunching against the beach sand.

When outside, Toya doesn't mind the cold. It's odd, but the cold of a clear winter's day, spent outside, is far less piercing than the cold of a windless, silent house. Out here, he can feel the pulse of the earth, and that is warmth enough; cut off from it inside of a manmade house, that's the most piercing cold in the world.

_Enough with this weird philosophical mumbo-jumbo, _Toya thinks to himself, quirking a thin twitch of a smile. He stuffs his hands in his pockets and casts his eyes out towards the sea.

The morning is still dreary gray; the sun has yet to break through the thick canopy of clouds. There's no trace of rain on the horizon, no smell of coming water, no telltale rumble of distant thunder or flash of distant lightning. In all likelihood the clouds will break come midday to reveal a dazzling pale blue winter's sky. For now, though, it's gray.

Toya stares out at the sea. Without a blue sky to reflect, the choppy surface of the water is all gray and white. There are moments when a little bit of the cloud cover will clear and the crest of a wave will catch a brief glimpse of sunlight. In those moments, the water glimmers silver instead of gray, sparkling as though the waves are made of precious metal in place of water. It's just a hint Toya catches, but enough for him to long to see a blue sea again, in place of gray.

"_It's interesting, sometimes, to go take a walk out in the beach in the early morning. Just to see if there's any shells or debris that stands to your eyes, or to smell the air before the sun's risen too high. I think it has a different smell at night and in the early morning than it does during the day. The sea, I mean."_

Ikuko had said that sometime back, leaning absently over a pot of Mother-in-law's tongue, examining the blade-like leaves for any sign of damage. Bernkastel had accidentally knocked the pot over—though Toya's not entirely sure how the cat managed it, considering how heavy that pot and its plant is, and the fact that Bernkastel, though a fairly big cat, isn't really big enough to knock over a thirty-pound-plus pot. Ikuko, after righting the pot and lightly swatting her cat in reprisal (Bernkastel hissed and stalked off somewhere to sulk), checked over her plant to make sure it hadn't sustained any damage.

Toya had been wondering aloud whether it would be nice to walk around on the beach at this time of year. Just a simple question, muttered aloud. He hadn't even meant for Ikuko to hear it. "_The beach is fine, even at this time of year. And are you going to let something like cold weather keep you inside? I should think that no one with self-respect would let a simple thing like "winter" keep them from venturing outside of their house."_

Of course, directly after this little taunt, just as though she had never said it at all, Ikuko had started going on about the Mother-in-law's tongue. "_You know, I asked Kaname-san, and he said that this plant is more than twenty years old. Can you believe that? I suppose it goes to show what can be accomplished with the combination of a hardy plant and a diligent gardener." _

All this, from the advice to the taunting to the random comment about a house plant, Ikuko said without ever looking up at him. It really is remarkable how she can transition like that so smoothly—and without even looking at the person she's advising, taunting, or commenting to. _She must have started that young_, Toya muses, _to be so skilled. Must have driven her parents crazy._

All told, though, Toya's glad he took Ikuko's advice. _I guess if you like the ocean, it doesn't matter what time of year you find yourself on the beach._

A lonely seagull, all alone out here, darts back and forth away from the waves on webbed feet a few yards away. The thin twitch of a smile turns to a full-bodied one as the spray comes up to hit his face yet again.

By Ikuko, Toya is supposed to have washed up on this shore from some unknown place. If all life sprang from the ocean, then he supposes that he was born there too; his body came from the sea and he has no memories prior to waking up. _I guess you could call me the child of sea spirits. That sounds more exciting than being human, to be honest._

People who suffer a fall from a great height sometimes develop a fear of heights. Those who have been in car accidents might be reluctant to ever set foot in a car again (_And maybe this is why Toya doesn't like cars_). Toya supposes that, after the experience of nearly drowning in the sea, he might have been forgiven for acquiring an aversion to the great expanse of salt water out before him. But he doesn't.

How exactly is he supposed to be afraid of the ocean if he never remembers having nearly drowned in it? Toya woke up in a hospital. All he has to know that he washed up on this shore is Ikuko's assertion that she found him here. That's all he has, and for all Toya knows, she could have hit him with her car and covered it up to avoid criminal charges—though Toya likes to think that Ikuko wouldn't have done that, and that he would have had some pretty different injuries if he'd been hit by a car.

He has no need to fear the waters lapping now at his shoes, and no inclination to. If anything, were it not for the unkind coldness of the winter season, Toya might just strip off his coat and shirt and shoes and dive into the water. In place of fear, he feels close, dear kinship, imagining a siren voice at night when the moon is high in the sky and all the sea gulls have gone to rest.

Or maybe that's just Toya developing an overactive imagination.

"Toya!" Toya turns around to see Ikuko walking towards him, her skirt billowing out behind her. "Wait a minute." He raises his eyebrows as she nears. Ikuko's face has the sort of strained color in it that comes from still being tired.

"I hadn't thought you were awake yet," Toya says when she catches up to him. He cracks a grin when he gets a good look at the hat she's wearing—white canvas, broad-brimmed and adorned with a dark purple ribbon that streams out like twin flags caught in a gale. It looks like something more suited to being worn in spring or on Valentine's Day. Or maybe White Day. Who knows. "Nice hat."

Ikuko takes a moment to rake her hair out of her face primly and straighten said hat. "Should've gotten some hatpins," she mutters. "Thank you," she responds, deliberately ignoring the ironic tone in his voice. "And I'm not that late of a riser."

"You heard me leaving, didn't you?"

"I was already awake," she maintains, with all due dignity. "I was surprised to see _you _up this early, though. It's barely eight; you're usually still asleep."

"I'm _allowed _to get up earlier than usual once in a while, aren't I?"

"Of course you are, Toya." She flashes her thin-lipped, catlike smile, and Toya gets the distinct impression that Ikuko is trying to make that smile as knowing and as eerie as she possibly can. He'd long suspected that she was doing that on purpose, and here, here is the proof.

Their voices drop to silence, and the waves lapping against the shore fills in the quiet for them. Ikuko keeps a hand constantly planted on her hat to keep it from flying off, and Toya just keeps an eye out, waiting for it to fly off, because he gets the distinct impression that if that happens, Ikuko will force him to go chasing after it. He just can't picture Ikuko going running off across the dunes or into the water after her hat. The image of Ikuko _running_, for any reason, just isn't something Toya can wrap his mind around.

_If that hat blows off, it'll be just my luck that it lands in the water. Ikuko will probably just _beg _me to go after it, and if I don't she'll pull the old guilt trip routine. I can just hear it now: "Who's feeding you? Who's allowing you to sleep in the spare bedroom? Who took you in? Is this how you show your gratitude? Be a man, and go save my hat!"_

_After that, I'd have no choice but to go in after it; my honor as a man would have been at stake. Then, I'd come back soaked, and she'd probably just sniff and say "About time."_

_Then I'd get pneumonia and die._

_Just like in the movies._

"So I guess you took my advice," Ikuko says softly, "and didn't let the cold scare you off after all."

Toya's lip twitches; a sea gull passes overhead, crying raucously. "Who doesn't like the beach? Even in winter?"

"It was part of the appeal when I moved here," Ikuko remarks, smiling a somewhat different smile than what Toya's used to—gentler, significantly gentler than that sharp-edged cat's smile. But there's something guarded in her voice, keeping the inflections from revealing too much. If the eyes are windows to the soul, Ikuko usually keeps the blinds drawn over them so no one can see what lies within, but those eyes are even more unreadable than usual.

_Huh, that's weird. Why does she think she needs to do that?_

Before Toya can work up the nerve to ask Ikuko if there's anything wrong, she turns her gaze on him, and she's back to wearing that cat-smile he's so used to. "I'm going to take the movie back some time today. Do you want to come with me?"

All mention of the movie makes good cheer fly from Toya's mind like rats off a sinking ship. He stares so hard at the sand that he's amazed it doesn't heat up and turn to glass. "No thanks," he mutters. She just had to bring _that _up again.

As much as Toya tells himself that he forgives Ikuko for renting that incredibly tasteless (under the circumstances) video, he would rather avoid anything resembling discussion about it. _Ikuko, for someone who is seemingly quite intelligent, your sheer lack of tact is really quite amazing sometimes._

"What, are you still afraid of the way the car shakes when it hits the gravel?"

Any potential audience (two seagulls and a lone crab) should probably be excused while Ikuko further confirms to all the world that she possesses all the tact of a hailstone.

Toya shakes his head, grimacing and wondering just how to phrase it. _May as well be direct. She'll probably start teasing me if I try to beat around the bush. _"It doesn't sound very pleasant, no. …Ikuko," he says gingerly, "please don't get a movie like that again."

Ikuko's eyes widen in an almost-convincing facsimile of innocence. _She _did _get it on purpose. Okay Ikuko, that was just mean. Even so, I suppose I probably should just forgive her and let it slide. After all, Ikuko _is _absolutely, completely tactless. _"Didn't you like it?"

"No, I didn't. Ikuko, didn't it occur to you when you saw that movie on the shelf in the movie store, that it might hit just a little too close to home for me?"

Her purple eyes remain as wide open as a cat's in stalker mode, her hands laced behind her back. _Oh God, please don't let the wind pick up. Her hat'll go flying. _"It didn't really occur to me until after you went to bed. Your rather abrupt exit gave me time to think."

Something tells Toya that it had occurred to Ikuko _long _before he stepped out on movie night, but he lets that slide too. It really isn't worth picking at small details with Ikuko, especially since he's pretty sure that in arguments of any kind, if Ikuko gets on a roll, Ikuko will win. She just seems like the sort of person who wouldn't be able to stand losing an argument, unless she lost on her own terms.

Despite himself, though, he quirks a rueful smile. _At least she shows consistency about something; she certainly knows how to keep me on my toes. _"Whatever. Just… Just try, the next time you decide to rent a movie, to make sure that amnesia doesn't feature in the plot at all, please?"

Mercifully, Ikuko goes back to gripping her hat with one hand. A particularly sharp gust of wind makes her hair whip about like a ship's sail in a gale. "I'll do my best. However, Toya?" She takes a moment to make sure he can hear the almost singsong rise of her words. "If you don't come with me to the rental store, I can't guarantee that I'll come back with movies you would like. In fact, chances are I'd be more likely to come back with movies you would absolutely despise."

Given that the choices are either being bored to tears by an atrocious movie or scared half to death by being in a moving car when it's going over gravel, Toya doesn't have a hard deciding what he prefers. "I'll just have to take that chance."

Still singsong, Ikuko replies, "It's your choice."

Toya shakes his head and smiles. Typical Ikuko; definitely nothing out of place with her. It's comforting, sometimes, to have things he can count on.

Out over the water, the clouds clear enough to allow a sliver of the morning sun to be seen, painting the gray sea silver.

* * *

The plant _Sansevieria trifasciata_, better known in the U.S. as Mother-in-law's tongue, is a popular house plant native to West Africa. I know that in Japan, it's more typically called "Tiger's Tail", but I figured that, even if it was a bit inaccurate, calling the plant "Mother-in-law's tongue" might allow those who haven't seen it before to have a better idea of what it looks like. And yes, if you take care of them right, they do last for a _very _long time; my mother has a couple that are alleged to be more than thirty years old.


	11. a sliver of change

_a sliver of change_

* * *

"What are you writing?"

Ikuko barely restrains a yelp when that voice sounds at her shoulder. At the same time, she slams her journal shut and reassembles her face into a smile for the benefit of the curious Toya.

She had been cataloguing her observations of Toya—Ikuko hasn't been doing that very often, not since it became clear to her that there was an extremely solid wall between him and the world of his memories, but she supposes that she does need to keep in the habit of it. _I never knew you could hold a field study inside of your own house. _"Field study" is how Ikuko would like to refer to it, as opposed to anything else. "Observation of a lab rat" just doesn't have quite the same ring to it. Not nearly so elegant, not at all.

Toya had been playing with Bernkastel—or, more accurately, he was _trying _to play with Bernkastel. Both young man and cat were seated on the living room floor, between the coffee table and the couch directly opposite the one Ikuko sat on. Ikuko could barely make out Toya's white head over the stack of newspapers, but she could hear the jingle of the cat toy and the way Bernkastel's fluffy tail whacked the floor crossly.

"_Come on, Bernkastel. I've got the fishing rod with the weird-looking bee on the end. It's even got a bell. Don't you want to play with it?"_

Bernkastel's resounding silence, Ikuko could only assume, was definitive evidence of her disdain for any attempt of Toya's at familiarity.

Ikuko considered telling Toya that Bernkastel hasn't really been interested in playing since she was about two years old. She considered telling him that the cat, though not at all averse to being petted and scratched and allowed on the lap, only played with things she planned on killing and leaving disemboweled on the back porch later. Ikuko considered it, but didn't.

_It's much more interesting to chronicle his attempts to make nice with Bern. It would be even more interesting if he went a little too far and Bern scratched him in retaliation._

She had pored so intently over her writing, in fact—_'No matter how little response he got from Bernkastel, Toya still persisted in attempting to get the cat to play with him. His perseverance, though fruitless, could not be called anything but remarkable.'_—that Ikuko hadn't even noticed when Toya tired of playing with the cat, put up the cat toy, noticed that she was writing, and decided to investigate.

Now, Ikuko rests her hand against the closed journal, a seemingly gentle hand, but pressed down firmly enough that the implication is clear: _you will not see what's been written here. _Ikuko doesn't know how much Toya saw before he made his presence known; given what her handwriting tends to look like, he might not have been able to decipher it anyways. However much Toya's seen of it, Ikuko only smiles her perfectly gracious, cast-in-marble smile.

_May as well act all innocence, and behave as though it does not pertain to him at all._

"My diary," Ikuko explains succinctly.

At this, Toya's eyes light up, and Ikuko resists the urge to indulge in a silent little groan. "A diary?" His tone is something Ikuko would far rather hear out of her own mouth: teasing. "_You've _got a diary?"

In retrospect, Ikuko probably should have figured that the revelation that _yes_, she has a diary (even if that's not strictly the truth), was not going to be the sort of revelation that would leave her safe from ridicule. However, she did _not _figure, and that is precisely the point.

As it is, Toya apparently spies an opportunity to sharpen his own tongue on the whetstone of this new scrap of information.

"Ah-ah, could it be, that the seemingly dignified Hachijo Ikuko indulges in the habit of a schoolgirl?" His sea blue dance, a grin starting to tug none too gently at his lips. "Or perhaps you're starting to get forgetful, and you have to write everything down just to remember what you ate for breakfast?"

Ikuko isn't sure whether she deserves this or not. Toya probably thinks she does, as payment for all the teasing she's laid on him since they first met. He likely thinks of this as fair play, as him getting back at her. However, the second jibe and its implications can not be met with anything but indignation.

Her smile widens into a grin; under the circumstances, it seems more important for Toya to see her bared teeth than it is to maintain the modesty of a closed-mouth smile. "Toya, _please _do not make allusions to my age. My vanity can't take the assaults you make on it. And have no fear; my keeping a diary makes me neither a schoolgirl nor an old hag. Now away with you."

She reaches up and swats his arm. Toya just snorts and heads off in the direction of the library.

_I'll have to be more discreet in future_, she muses to herself, once Toya is out of sight and the slam of a door indicates that Ikuko has privacy once more. But despite all that, she smiles slightly, brushing a lock of hair back behind her shoulder.

The inclement weather—rain battering against the windows and the roof, the wind too great to allow the raindrops anything resembling a steady rhythm—bars both the humans and the cat living in this house from venturing outside. Indeed, this is a horrible day for all wild creatures and anyone unlucky enough to be caught outside on some errand. _Anyone out on the water would be dragged under in a second. I must go outside tomorrow morning; maybe I'll find another body, a _dead one _this time._

Not six months ago, on a day like this, Ikuko would take a book from the library and retreat to her bedroom, draping quilts over her shoulders with Bern resting at her feet. Lightning tears apart the sky like some great, celestial child with an art project. _I think that horror would probably suit the mood today. _For whatever reason, Ikuko can never really concentrate on writing during days of squally weather. On any other day, Ikuko can concentrate on scenarios and characters without issue, but when the wind batters on her windowpanes and the rain breaks the silence, her focus wanes. It's easier to read.

Chances are, that's what she'll still do today, once she finishes up down here. But there's a difference.

_When I go to pick out a book, there will be more than just my own mind pointing out recommendations. Toya's been running through the library with almost frightening speed. He'll be sure to supply his two cents when I go to get a book._

_It's nice to have someone to discuss books with._

Ikuko has grown used, all too used, to being entirely alone here, apart from her cat. When the servants come to clean, they don't speak to her, doubtless out of the want to finish their cleaning quickly, and because they know that when Ikuko's working, she doesn't appreciate interruptions. The servants move through the house like ghosts; the only time Ikuko's truly _aware _of them is when Yoko or Harumi gets out the vacuum cleaner, and even then, only when the vacuum cleaner's being used on the second floor and close by.

She has lived in the quiet, the sanctity of silence broken only when she wants it to be broken. In such a world, Ikuko has grown used to solitude, to never hearing another human voice. The only time she hears voices spoken are the static-cracked voices over the radio or the television, or the grainy ones on the record player. Anything else—the occasional interruption by Harumi or Kaname or one of the others coming to tell her something's wrong—is far and few between, so rare that she forgets about it entirely.

Naturally, one who has grown so accustomed to silence is unfamiliar with the experience of constantly having one around who's willing to fill the empty spaces with sound.

If Ikuko adores silence, Toya flees from it. This wasn't so apparent at first, but soon, she started to notice how often he'll put a record on the record player, or even break out the cassette player, even though Ikuko's collection of cassette tapes can not compare to her store of records. He might even turn on the television set, though Ikuko's snuck downstairs and watched him from her hiding place often enough to know that he isn't actually watching whatever's on (usually the news); he has it on for background noise while he reads.

_Interesting. Silence is considered by many to be the perfect venue for self-reflection. Perhaps the fact that Toya avoids silence so often is a metaphor for some sort of internal struggle. I must write this down; it could come in handy later._

Of course, there's always the possibility that maybe Toya just doesn't like the white noise from the light fixtures, but Ikuko doesn't really consider that. The mundane tends to be forgotten in place of the symbolic in her mind.

Anyway, back to the point.

Ikuko is startled, deeply startled, to discover that she actually looks forward to the moment when she goes perusing the shelves for a book, and Toya might say:

"_Not that one, Ikuko. You've read that a _dozen _times."_

Or…

"_What, you're going for that? You could see the plot twists coming a mile away, even if it was your first time reading it!"_

Or maybe even…

"_Oh, that's a good one. I'd definitely go with that one."_

No matter what Toya says, Ikuko gives some sort of rebuttal as to why his opinion is _clearly _wrong, and if they're not careful the whole thing spins out of control into a literary "debate" that might last as long as an hour before they finally lose interest and go their separate ways with separate books. Though it might have seemed a spirited debate, they go away only with smiles, not with frowns.

When she had first come to live here, Ikuko had had every intention of making an asylum for herself here, where she would never have to find herself in constant contact with the outside world again. To that end, she never made any effort to make connections with the locals here. She had no friends and could not have told you any of their names. Ikuko simply didn't see the point of getting to know anyone; she just didn't care. She still doesn't, not really.

If Toya had been someone who simply moved to town the normal way, Ikuko has no doubt that she never would have met him. Or that she would, but that she would have nodded her head, said vague things, and forgotten him the moment he was out of her line of sight, just as she did with everything that was not of importance to her world. All of it would have faded to gray mist, as he would have.

As it is, Toya has not become background noise or a wall fixture. Far from it—with each passing day he grows more noticeable. With every day that goes down, it seems more and more as though he's always lived here, as though he and Ikuko have always had there literary debates and their walks and their fussing over Toya's eating habits (He still insists on ingesting far more microwavable ramen than what's good for him).

Ikuko never thought that she would even remotely enjoy sharing her home with anyone other than her cat. She never thought she would grow accustomed to a constant undercurrent of sound. She'd had enough of living in a big city to last her ten lifetimes; its constant noises, the wails of sirens, the sounds of construction, the car passing by on the street at three in the morning, these things always irritated her so. Ikuko bought earplugs just to block out the ambient noise, and once she had moved here, she had been so utterly overjoyed by the silence that even if she had been permitted to move out, she wouldn't have.

If honesty is warranted in such a situation, Ikuko can only assume that she's grown to genuinely enjoy Toya's presence here. She doesn't know when it happened—maybe it's always been like this, and she's just now begun to notice.

_Funny how these things tend to creep up on me; I never notice them until they've gotten a grip on my shoulders. My classmates always said I was very absent, that way._

_But I guess I do enjoy having him around. Sometimes, even my writing grows too monotonous, and I need company that can actually talk to me. Bernkastel, though she is invaluable to me, can't talk. Obviously._

Ikuko clutches her book as she stands, and heads towards the kitchen.

_Amazingly, I find I do like having someone to talk to on equal terms. It's… nice, I suppose._

She's recently discovered a brand of cinnamon plum tea that she likes very much. It has a strong, heady taste—good for stormy December days when no one in their right minds is outside. Maybe she'll see if Toya wants some.


	12. of snow

_of snow_

* * *

_Crack! _The sound of Ikuko popping open chestnuts with a nutcracker reverberates through the living room. Down on the floor, Bernkastel bats at a discarded shell, plopped down there for her amusement, with a lethargic sort of half-interest. Huddled beneath electric blankets (they searched high and low for a kotatsu, but to no avail), Toya and Ikuko keep to their own activities, silent. On a day like this, they feel too lazy to even change out of their pajamas.

I am, of course, talking about Christmas.

Toya has discovered that Ikuko's attitude towards holidays is, quite frankly, apathetic, if the way she treats Christmas is any indication. She views Christmas as a day quite like any other day, the only difference being that she feels it to be an appropriate occasion to still be in her pajamas (A powder blue dressing gown and what appears to be a quite long—for a woman who appears to be relatively young, anyways—light gray nightgown, to be exact). Toya doesn't think he's ever seen Ikuko anything but fully dressed before; he can quite easily imagine her saying something about needing to appear beautiful at all times if he was ever to ask.

The fact that she's being so lax in that respect indicates that she does see Christmas as a different sort of day than the days up until now. However, Ikuko doesn't acknowledge it as different beyond being willing to laze around in her nightclothes all day.

Toya supposes he should be grateful for Ikuko's lackadaisical attitude. Though he only really knows what he does about Christmas from books, television commercials and the stack of bright, gaudily colored Christmas catalogues now sitting on the coffee table in place of the usual newspapers, he knows that people usually exchange gifts on Christmas.

Okay, true, Christmas seems to be a holiday more for lovers than family, at least in Japan. Frankly, Toya can't really classify their relationship as falling into either categories—they're not related and not in love, just friends, but normally, even friends exchange gifts on Christmas day and the surrounding days. And yet, Toya has no gift for Ikuko.

He has no excuse for himself. He can't explain it away as being afraid of the car, because the weather, apart from being cold, has been perfectly fine the past few days, and with enough bundling of thick, warm winter clothes, and a bit of money taken from the ceramic cash jar sitting out on top of a countertop in the sitting room, Toya could have just walked to town and gotten Ikuko something cheap.

_I could have gotten her chocolate. Ikuko likes chocolate—the number of cartons of Russell Stover chocolates I've found in the trash proves it! Oh yeah, Ikuko likes her fancy imported chocolates. Yeah, that might seem like a "romantic" gift, unless it's obligation chocolate on Valentine's Day or White Day, but what else am I supposed to give her? I don't know that much about her habits except that she likes to read as much as I do. If I got her a book, for all I know, it would be a book she already had. That's a lousy gift._

Toya can't excuse his lack of gift with having been unable to go in to town. He can't really excuse it with anything; he just forgot to do it. The holiday just crept up on him, something not helped by the fact that Ikuko hasn't had a Christmas tree or "festive holiday decorations" of any sort put up around the house. Before he knew it, Toya was waking up on an overcast, chilly day, looking at the calendar in his bedroom, and gaping in horror when he realized it was Christmas.

He's since gotten over his horror.

"_I hope you didn't get me anything for Christmas," _Ikuko commented absently when he came downstairs. _"I don't really celebrate Christmas very much; it's always seemed like a waste of time to me."_

Toya can only assume that's code for "_I forgot to get you anything." _Oh well. In this case, he's certainly not complaining, if Ikuko is going to, however unwittingly, provide a cover for his own forgetfulness.

So now, though there is nothing about the house to even suggest that it might be Christmas, Toya is reading a sort-of "Christmasy" novel in the hopes of getting himself in the mood. _A Christmas Carol, _to be in fact; nothing like Dickens to make a man remember why an obsessive focus on the material realm will leave you empty inside.

"I suppose I can go out tomorrow," Ikuko remarks unexpectedly. Toya looks up from his reading, brow furrowed. The nutcracker dangles between two of Ikuko's long fingers with their neat, even nails; she stares down at the mountain made of her crooked knees and the yellow electric blanket draped over them. "The Christmas cakes in the local bakery should be on sale." Suddenly, she looks straight at Toya, with a thin smile on her face. "Do you want to go with me?"

_Stop trying to get me in a car_, Toya can't help but think. Knowing that he should probably say something a bit more polite than that, he shakes his head. "No thanks."

"Really? You'd be sure to get a cake you like that way," Ikuko points out, singsong. "If you don't go with me, I can't guarantee the cakes I bring back will be anything you like. I might come back, and all the cakes would be that German chocolate you gagged on last month."

"You don't really like German chocolate either," Toya retorts. _Caught you there. _"Why would you get it?"

She shrugs. "You never know. I might pick it up by accident, and you'd be the only one to stop me from making a purchase I'd regret."

Given that Ikuko doesn't put anything in her mouth until she knows what it is and how long it's been sitting in her refrigerator (or pantry), Toya snorts. She might be careless about other things, but the likelihood of Ikuko accidentally buying a cake is somewhere between none and minus one thousand.

He falls back to his reading. As Toya peruses the dusty old morality tale that filmmakers seem to feel obliged to make a movie out of every few years, he starts to frown. _I wonder… _He puts down his book and stares out the window.

The morning is chilly and gray, with the thick cloud cover he's seen for about a week now. The world certain seems to be sapped of all color, as it has been all winter. It's Christmas; they've got chestnuts, and electric blankets and milk and _A Christmas Carol. _So where, Toya asks, is the snow?

He's not entirely sure why he wants to see snow, not at first. From what Toya understands, snow is basically no more than frozen rain. While solid, it has a tendency to make paved roads extremely dangerous to travel on. When melting, icicles have a tendency to drop on people's heads and large quantities of snow on tree branches will blanket whole houses if its allowed to. Once totally melted, it makes the ground soggy, and threatens to turn the roads icy once again if the temperature drops.

And yet…

Everything remotely associated with Christmas tells Toya that there must be snow on Christmas Day, and Christmas Eve too if it can be arranged. Every novel he's ever read that focuses on that particular time of year talks about it snowing, unless the book in question's set in the tropics. All the Christmas commercials have had snow. All the catalogues have pictures of snow on them.

Toya's never experienced snow, not in this consciousness, anyways; his former self might have seen and even played in snow, but for obvious reasons, he can't know. He supposes he might be curious about what it's like. He supposes that, due to the power of advertising, he's come to associate Christmas with snow even though this is pretty much his first Christmas. Maybe he just wants to know if it's really as powder-soft as all sources allege.

So where's the snow?

Book forgotten entirely, Toya's eyes sear the window moodily. Though the sky may be thick with clouds, it doesn't look like it's going to rain. He's heard that it had to be thirty-two degrees Fahrenheit or colder for snow to stay solid, and though it is quite brisk outside, Toya has a hard time believing the temperature is any colder than forty right now.

"Hey, Ikuko?"

Back to cracking chestnuts, Ikuko responds with a vague "Hmm?"

"Does it ever snow here?"

"Not as long as I've lived here."

Toya sighs.

_That's depressing. And here I was hoping for a white Christmas…_


	13. Rain Upon Glass

_Rain Upon Glass _

* * *

January opens up and the skies open up with it. There's been naught but storms for the past week; Toya hasn't seen the sun in two. Bernkastel was pawing at the door earlier today—Ikuko must have locked the cat door, or something. When Toya got up to open the door, she stared dubiously out the door, seemingly realizing for the first time just how strong the wind was, before turning around and walking off in a huff, as though it was stupid of Toya to ever believe that she would want out. Her departure up the stairs leaves Toya alone in the library, lost among a sea of books, thunder making the windowpanes rattle.

Toya supposes that he's going to have to learn English one of these days; enough of Ikuko's books are in English that it frustrates him to pick one up, expecting to be able to read the title, only to find it in a language he does not even begin to understand.

_She has so many books here that I don't suppose I should let the fact that a small number of them are in English discourage me. But really, it's insanely frustrating. It's like reaching for a candy bar at a drugstore, only for your mother to smack your hand away and point you towards the more nutritious, less flavorful option._

_Well, maybe that's not such a great metaphor. I don't know. Maybe if the little kid was allergic to the food coloring dyes in the candy bar…_

Toya settles down in one of the almost-too-heavily cushioned armchairs in a nook by the far left-hand window, where he can't see the door thanks to the bookcase standing in his way.

The shelf his eyes are naturally drawn to is full of atlases and reference books; Ikuko once mentioned that, since she didn't travel very much, she liked to have books with information about foreign lands at her disposal so she wouldn't be left in the dark. She also appears to have the second version of the fifteenth edition of the _Encyclopædia Britannica, _translated into Japanese, no less, at her disposal. Toya pulls an atlas of northwestern Europe down off the shelf, just so he'll have somewhere to look that isn't the pepper-dark sky.

Toya doesn't like rain. He doesn't like drizzle, showers, or even a light spray with the sun still out. He likes storms like this even less, thunder rolling over a storm-tossed sea like a spectral herd of horses, the lightning their glowing eyes… He just hates it.

If he also has an instinctive dislike for mirrors, Toya supposes it could be because of the headaches. He hardly ever has those anymore, those strange headaches that come out of nowhere, but sometimes, when he catches a glimpse of his face in glass, or when the thunder rumbles just overhead, a blinding flash of pain will come, just for a second, but he knows it's come to remind him of what may await him if he starts trying to dig at his past.

Of course, this interpretation is uncomfortable for Toya, so much so that he tries himself trying to assign other reasons for why he doesn't like the rain.

It could be that when it's storming like this, he's trapped in the house, at the mercy of the inclement weather, until the skies clear and the rains stop. Toya doesn't like to be at the mercy of things, especially not if said "things" aren't capable of being predicted. No matter what the weatherman reports, a storm can come out of nowhere and it can be hours, even days, before it leaves. In that time, a storm can do an incredible amount of damage, even if the wind isn't high or the lightning doesn't set fire to everything it touches—simple flooding can do more damage than that. Ikuko might say that the beauty of such destructive force should not be discounted, but Toya can't see anything beautiful about houses swept away by floodwater.

Maybe he doesn't like the idea of being assaulted by water he can't control. A shower cap is one thing, but rain? It's cold and just keeps pelting you even if you do have an umbrella—the insidiousness of rain is such that it can circumvent even that boundary.

Maybe he doesn't like going without seeing the sun for so long.

For all Toya knows, it could be that he just doesn't like the sound of rain hitting the roof.

There comes a sound from somewhere near the door, and Toya looks up, frowning. He hears a book being slid off a shelf. Seconds after that, hurried, irritated footsteps sound, followed by a slamming of the door, and more footsteps, this time on the stairs. Then, he smiles, a lopsided half-grin that threatens to break out into laughter.

_She didn't even realize I was in here._

Toya wonders when, if ever, Ikuko will just break down and install a sort-of do-it-yourself dumbwaiter system. After all, her study is directly above the library. She could just carve a hole in the flood, tie a rope to a basket or bucket, send it down to the library and scream for someone to put the books she wanted in the bucket. She wouldn't even have to come up or down the stairs anymore; she could even take her meals that way. It sounds like the sort of thing Ikuko would do.

_She'd never come out of that study anymore, except to sleep. And given the time of night she normally goes to bed, I'd probably never see her again. She'd probably get a good laugh out of it, but in a scenario like that she could be dead for days before anyone noticed the difference. What would the police make of something like that? Would I get tossed in jail, even though I hadn't done anything? _Clearly Toya has been reading far too many novels about implausible deaths and dirty (or simply uncaring) cops lately.

Thunder crashes, and with it comes a sharp jolt in his head. Toya rubs his forehead, wincing, and away from the books, his eyes turn to the window.

He can make up reasons for disliking the rain all he wants, but once the drumming on his skull starts, he knows exactly why.

_I can understand mirrors. _Though the brutal tan he had gotten from floating about the sea has since faded, and his hair isn't quite so brittle anymore, Toya still sports bone-white hair and an odd smattering of freckles. He still gets pain in his head when he looks into the mirror, and in that case, at least, he understands why. _What do we remember about people first? Their faces. Their hair color, eye color, skin color. If I get the pain in my head every time I try to remember who I was, then the mirror is an issue because just looking at my face assaults what sort of block I've got about what my life was like._

_But why do I get the same pain when I see—or hear—the rain?_

Toya sinks into his armchair and frowns pensively. The thunder, when it booms once more, sounds a little less vigorous this time; more like a grumble than a roar. He still gets that heartbeat's worth of pain, like the jab of an ice pick against his hairline, with each clap though.

_I know what I need. _He gets up, and starts perusing the aisles once more. _I need a good book and a chair away from any windows. I don't need to be thinking about why I dislike rain. It's futile, and frankly kinda stupid, to dislike something that's going to happen whether I want it to or not._

The steady, almost rhythmic drumming of the rain against the roof seems to agree with him.


	14. Obligation Chocolate

_Obligation Chocolate_

* * *

Ikuko grimaces when she looks at her calendar and realizes what's taking place in three days. February has arrived with a flurry of chill winds and fragrant white plum blossoms from the small plum trees in her front yard, but Ikuko had not realized the implications of what February brings until she had looked at her calendar and realized the date:

February 11.

In three days time, it will be Valentine's Day.

Pausing from her writing, Ikuko groans. _Can't I just boycott the holiday this year? For God's sake, the only good thing to come from Valentine's Day—or White Day, for that matter—is all the chocolate the grocery stores put on sale the day after._

Ikuko has never really liked Valentine's Day—or White Day, if you want to get really honest about it. Just from their guesswork, most of the people who know this would simply assume that Ikuko doesn't like these holidays because she never had anyone to give chocolate to, and that no one had ever given her chocolate. Well, technically, they're right, but _really_, that's not the reason she doesn't like Valentine's Day. _Really_.

The plain, blatant _falseness _of Valentine's Day offends Ikuko. The frilly decorations in the stores, the cloying television specials, the saccharine couples Ikuko runs into wherever she goes—good God, the beach will probably be flooded with lovers, even though the weather's still been dreary, dirtying the air with their whispers and their longing stares.

Ikuko will concede that there is a place for romance. She does enjoy a well-written romance novel, especially if the romance is not the sum of the plot and it's a subplot that doesn't metastasize and overtake the plot like a malignant tumor. Of course, the problem with that is that Ikuko's pretty sure she hasn't been satisfied with a romance novel since she went through Jane Austen's works. God knows she doesn't include romance in her own writing, not often. Romance is not a theme that has any place in the mystery genre; all it serves to do is gunk up the storyline and distract from the meat of the plot.

_I swear, the only good thing about Valentine's Day, the only good thing at all, is all that wonderful chocolate you see everywhere. But even the reason the chocolate's here makes me want to scream. Valentine's Day is a _western _holiday, just like Christmas—the only reason it's here is because of advertising. And the only reason White Day exists _at all _is because some idiot bungled the advertising, and made it seem like only men could receive chocolate on Valentine's Day. It's completely hopeless!_

Once Ikuko calms herself and recalls that going on long-winded rants like this only ever serve to give her headaches, she sighs and taps her pen against the edge of her desk, rubbing her forehead with her free hand.

There's no use denying the inevitable: Valentine's Day is coming. In past years, Ikuko was able to ignore it (usually by staying in bed all day and ramming her pillow over her ears, as if fearing that if she didn't, "holiday spirit" would trickle in through the open orifices and infect her brain), but this year, she won't.

No, this year, her circumstances are different, and Ikuko simply isn't going to be permitted to behave as though Valentine's Day does not exist.

As she starts trying to remember which grocery store in town sells the most chocolate for the lowest price, Ikuko decides that cultural obligations are the bane of her existence.

_Ah, my ego will never overcome this blow._

-0-0-0-

Toya finds himself eating breakfast (scrambled eggs; it was the easiest thing to make, not nearly as hard as Ikuko had hinted it would be, even if the eggs are a bit runny), when suddenly he finds Ikuko shoving a heart-shaped box a shade of pink so bright it hurts his eyes into his face. He looks up at her puzzled, only to find Ikuko sit herself down in the chair opposite him, nursing a mug of coffee and wearing a decidedly vexed expression.

"Ikuko…"

Ikuko squeezes her eyes shut, biting her lower lip irritably; Toya doesn't think he's ever seen her look so annoyed. "Please understand that I can't help but think of homemade chocolates as incredibly overrated. They often come out with a taste unequal to chocolate you could find in a grocery store, and it seems a waste to devote so much time and energy to something when the recipient is unlikely to appreciate the _amount _of care that was put into making them."

Toya looks at the box, looks at Ikuko—rubbing her forehead—and looks at the box again. Maybe it's got something to do with the fact that it's only seven and he's barely awake, but he's not entirely sure what's going on. "Ikuko, what…"

"It's Valentine's Day," Ikuko reminds him flatly.

_Well, that explains it. I feel stupid. _"Oh… Oh! I knew that," Toya says hastily, not quite meeting Ikuko's purple eyes.

For the first time, some hint of the familiar, caustic humor flickers in Ikuko's perpetually half-shut eyes. "I'm sure. The blank stare in your eyes, so reminiscent of a deer caught in the headlights of a car, is so normal for you that it does not in any way speak to confusion on your part."

Knowing better than to get dragged into a verbal sparring match with Ikuko (he will surely lose), Toya addresses the sour puckering of her lips that he had seen when she first sat down. "You don't seem to like Valentine's Day very much."

Ikuko's eyes go shut again, but this time she smirks—a very bitter, hard-edged smirk. "I am the Ebenezer Scrooge of Valentine's Day, Toya," she declares, perhaps a little more dramatically than normal, "and no amount of ghosts will convince me to view the holiday as anything worth celebrating. However—" her tone shifts to something distinctly more businesslike "—cultural obligations must be fulfilled."

Toya's lip twitches in a smile. "I suppose they must," he agrees between bites of egg.

"Which reminds me—" Toya's eyes dart up to find Ikuko smiling faintly, stirring her light brown coffee with a cofee spoon; _that's odd, I've never seen that sort of smile on her face before _"—White Day is in a month. As you've probably gathered, I prefer store bought chocolate to homemade. I don't want to find coconut in any of them; I wouldn't say no, however, to chocolate with other types of fillings, especially not truffle or peanut clusters. And I've always thought that, when looking to give chocolate, buying a box with anything less than twelve chocolates is really bad taste."

_Well…_

Having dropped her unsubtle hints, Ikuko goes back to daintily sipping her heavily-sugared, heavily-creamed coffee, eyes roving the newspaper laid out in front of her.

For himself, Toya has more or less forgotten about his breakfast.

Ah, obligation chocolate. A joy to receive and flat-out embarrassing to give. If it weren't for the fact that he'll have to find something to give Ikuko all too soon, he might tease her about the fact that she considers him someone she needs to be giving obligation chocolate to, might tease her about the implications of their having a relationship that necessitates the giving of chocolate at all. He might do that, but the fact that White Day is merely a month away means that Ikuko would still remember his teasing, and would likely give back tenfold when the awaited day arrived.

There's nothing for it. Toya will simply have to shelve his fear of rattling vehicles and ask Hatsuna if he can go with her the next time Ikuko sends her out to the grocery store. Even with the watery sunlight and the nippy winds, Toya can't risk whatever chocolate he buys her melting before he got back to the house.

Still a bit chagrined at the thought of having to buy obligation chocolate, Toya opens the heart-shaped box Ikuko gave him. He has to admit, he's surprised to see that all the slots are still filled with little assorted chocolates—Ikuko probably would have considered it a fine joke to have eaten all the chocolates in advance and give him the empty box, or, more likely, might have simply done so out of carelessness.

After debating the potential merits of each one, Toya picks up a rectangular, dark chocolate candy, and plops it in his mouth.

Huh.

Strawberry crème.


	15. Disturbing Implications

_Disturbing Implications _

* * *

White Day came and went a week prior—and much like that morning, and Valentine's Day morning, Toya finds himself sitting across from Ikuko, eating his breakfast quietly. He supposes the only reason he's thinking about that at all is because Ikuko's finally finished the box of white chocolate he gave her; he can see the end sticking out of the flap of the trash can. Given how much Ikuko loves chocolate, you'd think she'd just gobble them up like some greedy, implacable witch, but no, Ikuko insists on savoring every last bite, so it can be days before she goes through a box of chocolates.

Picking out chocolate for Ikuko had been relatively easy, as it turns out—Hatsuna had helped, Toya recalls, with a grimace and a momentary rush of color to the cheeks that he's relieved Ikuko doesn't notice.

"_Well, you can never go wrong with chocolate," Hatsuna remarks sagely, brushing a lock of brown hair back behind her ears. "A woman might not like the sort of jewelry you buy her, or she might be allergic to the flowers, but you can never go wrong with chocolate."_

_Toya frowns. "Yes, but what about something more permanent?" They step up from the parking lot and pause beneath the awning outside the automatic doors of the grocery store, straightening their coats as they do so. It's no longer so miserable as it was in winter, but the March wind still carries a brisk chill. "Wouldn't jewelry be more appropriate in that sort of situation?"_

_At the sight of Hatsuna's knowing smile, Toya resists the urge to take a step back. "Perhaps, but as I seem to recall, you were trying to avoid "giving the wrong impression", weren't you?" Toya's face flushes, and she seems to bite back a laugh. "Toya-san, Madam likes _expensive_ jewelry. I should know; I take them to be cleaned every year. More expensive than what could be covered by the money in the cash jar, I might add."_

"_Ah." Toya rubs the back of his neck before stopping at remembrance of a comment of Ikuko's: _You shouldn't do that unless you want to give others the indication that you're still a child. _"I guess that would be a problem."_

"_As I said, Toya-san, you can never go wrong with chocolate. Madam likes chocolate, and she's not nearly so picky as she would have you think."_

_They step into the grocery store, and Toya immediately notices something that he can't help but think of as jarring. _It's so quiet. _The silence reverberates back upon him, as oppressive as any sea of voices; he and Hatsuna are alone here._

"_Ah, Hatsuna-san… Is it usually this empty?" Not that Toya's complaining; he had been dreading facing a crowd, people who would look askance at the sight of a young man with white hair, people who ask him questions, try to talk to him, or simply look at him. He's not sure how he would have done around strangers. But still, the emptiness of this store is… odd._

"_Well, it's Sunday morning. I expect they're having a layabout."_

_Toya neglects to tell her that he doesn't think "layabout" is a noun. And he doesn't ask why, considering Hatsuna doesn't usually work Sundays, she decided to take him here today, and not have "a layabout" herself._

"_The chocolate's over there."_

Yes, _getting _Ikuko her chocolate had been relatively straightforward. _Giving _it to her, on the other hand, had been an awkward endeavor much on the scale of her having practically thrown his box of candy in his face on Valentine's Day. _"For you," _he'd muttered, determinedly not meeting Ikuko's gaze and sliding the long, rectangular box across the table.

To her credit, Ikuko had responded only with a calm, polite "_Thank you." _No teasing, no jibes, just unruffled dignity, giving him the clear message that she found all of this just as uncomfortable as he did and didn't want to prolong it any more than Toya did. Even now, he's still grateful for that.

Shaking off recollections of embarrassing holidays, Toya reaches to refill his glass.

"Grape juice?" Ikuko asks, eyes lighting on the bottle. A faint glimmering of humor plays around her mouth and the eyes that match the juice's shade almost perfectly. She's too tired, though, to do anything more than give a suggestion of a smirk and let that smirk carry her mockery.

Toya downs a gulp of grape juice, refusing to let Ikuko unbalance him. "I like it. It tastes—" He stops, frowning. "Do you hear something?"

Frowning as much as Toya, Ikuko nods. "Yes, I do. Bernkastel's scratching on the door." They stand and start towards the door.

"The cat door's open, isn't it?"

"Yes, it is." Her eyes sharpen. "I hope she isn't hurt." Ikuko's pace quickens, and her hands barely seem to light on the sliding door to the back porch before it's open.

No, Bernkastel is not hurt. The cat sits on the porch, her blue eyes staring expectantly up at the two humans who stand before her. She looks pleased as punch—Toya resists the urge to check her whiskers for cream—and when Toya looks over at what's lying beside her, he can see why.

Lying next to the cat, entrails spilling out onto the deck, is a quite large, quite dead rabbit. Its glassy eyes stare sightlessly up at a clear, pale blue sky, its fur matted with its own blood. If Toya were to look closely, he would see places where Bernkastel's usually sleek fur has been stuck to her body by the rabbit's blood, but he doesn't look closely. Feeling more than a little queasy, he's a bit busy trying his best _not _to look, and in the meantime curses Bernkastel for having waited until _after _he ate so much toast to call attention to her kill.

Ikuko, on the other hand, doesn't seem to feel nauseated in the least.

"Ooh, did you catch that? All by yourself? How wonderful; it's so big!" As Ikuko praises her cat on her catch—by Ikuko's terms, spectacular and marvelous—her eyes dance, and Toya can only gape in disbelief as she kneels, clutching her long skirt so it won't catch in the blood pooling on the deck, and gushes over her cat's latest kill.

Truth be told, Toya's never seen Ikuko get quite so… _enthused _about anything before. Not even when her new typewriter—not that Toya knows why Ikuko would be needing a typewriter; her handwriting is far more elegant-looking—came in the mail and she cracked a frankly evil-looking grin (any time Ikuko smiles Toya is put to remembering the Cheshire Cat, but her grins make the resemblance honestly terrifying), has he seen her so enthusiastic. With the amount of praise the cat's getting, Toya would honestly expect her to be leading up to something nasty and sarcastic to spoil Bernkastel's feeling of triumph, but for all intents and purposes, Ikuko appears to be genuinely nothing less than sincere in her praise.

"The way you're praising that cat," Toya remarks, smiling a slight, strained smile while determinedly looking anywhere but at the dead rabbit, "one would think she'd brought back the great white whale of Ahab's obsession."

Ikuko wrinkles her nose at him. "I see no reason to treat this as anything but a great feat for a cat. After all, the rabbit's nearly as big as she is. And isn't it _fascinating_? It's not every day you get to look at a corpse this close up." She motions to the stiff cadaver for emphasis.

Toya forces his eyes back on the rabbit for just a moment and, predictably, feels his gorge rise in his throat; the smell of the poor creature's all too visible viscera is utterly sickening, and the slight, sandy breeze isn't helping matters in the least. At the same time his eyes scan entrails, a piercing lightning bolt of pain cleaves his skull in two. _What? _He reaches up to clutch his head, clenching his teeth. The world tilts on its axis; he nearly loses his balance.

"Toya?" Far from her usual supremely confident self, Ikuko's voice now sounds more than a little uncertain. Listening to her is like being a foot underwater, and hearing someone talking above the surface of the water. "Are you alright? Do you need some Tylenol?"

The pain passes, leaving him weak, heart pounding, and Toya shakes his head, forcing breath out of his mouth. "I'm fine," he gasps. "Ikuko, only you would think a gutted animal was something interesting," he says shakily. "I'm not sure I want to know what that says about you as a person."

Ikuko reaches over to pet a loudly purring Bernkastel, her eyes still watchful. "It says that I am a person with great intellectual curiosity," she maintains with all due dignity. "Are you _sure _you're alright?" she asks again, staring up at him with eyes that seem to want to reach down into the depths of his very soul.

At the intense scrutiny of those eyes, Toya has to turn away. "I'm fine," he repeats himself, heading back inside where he won't have to be met with the smell of death.

Toya's sure he doesn't want to know what it was about the sight of that rabbit, lying cold, small and dead on the porch with its intestines dangling loose, that sent that familiar bolt of pain through his skull.


	16. Innermost

_Innermost_

* * *

Rule of thumb: when a book Toya's looking for isn't in the library, isn't in his bedroom or in the living room, it's probably hidden away somewhere in Ikuko's study. She does have a tendency to hoard stacks of books in that mystical realm—he's seen her grabbing as much as ten books as a time and, tottering all the way, heading back up the stairs with them.

_The Hound of the Baskervilles; where is it? _If it's not in the library, it must be up in Ikuko's study. No chance that it's simply been misplaced somewhere in the library; Ikuko insists on the fiction books being put in alphabetical order by the author's name, just as it would be in a public library, and if she finds so much as a single book out of place, well…

Toya looks about and sighs. Normally, it wouldn't be so irritating to have to wait a day (or a few days) for a certain book. Normally, he would just pick another book and read it until Ikuko relinquished whatever he was waiting for. But this is _not _a normal situation. He's been on a Sherlock Holmes kick lately, and he absolutely _has _to read _The Hound of the Baskervilles _before he moves on to anything else; if he doesn't, it will all feel out of order and weird.

So that leads him to a bit of a dilemma.

You see, Toya has never actually been inside of Ikuko's study before. He's not entirely sure that he's even supposed to be in there; he's never been invited inside, and when Ikuko was taking him on the "grand tour" when he first moved in here, she only pointed to the closed door, said "_That's my study" _and moved on. Really, her whole manner suggests that the study is her private space, the place where she retreats when she doesn't want to interact with any other living creature. And Ikuko really is a deeply private person; she's volunteered next to nothing about herself in the way of meaningful information in all the time he's known her. Is her study really a place he wants to go?

Non-question. Toya _really _wants that book, enough to brave Ikuko's annoyance at having invaded her private space. And really, how angry can she be?

-0-0-0-

Toya stands outside the shut door to Ikuko's study and knocks. "Ikuko?" he calls. "Have you got _The Hound of the Baskervilles _in there?"

For a long time, there's naught but silence. After twenty seconds of waiting with no response, Toya begins to wonder if maybe Ikuko isn't in there. _Maybe she's gone outside, looking for dead bodies. _But just as Toya's readying himself to go elsewhere in search of his housemate, there comes a response.

"Yes, I do," comes Ikuko's absent, decidedly muffled answer.

Nothing else is forthcoming. "Can I have it?" Toya asks, a bite of amused exasperation flavoring his voice.

"Yes, of course."

…

"May I come inside?"

"Oh yes, certainly," Ikuko responds airily. "The door's not locked, Toya. There's no reason why you _shouldn't _come in." All this she says, as though it's the most natural thing in the world that Toya should come inside, as though he's been in a thousand times and she _doesn't _keep the door shut at all times.

Well, this will be the first, and Toya can't deny that he's a little excited at the thought of finally seeing the inside of Ikuko's study.

He presses open the door, and steps inside the mysterious inner sanctum.

Okay, maybe it's just a tiny bit of a letdown.

The "inner sanctum" looks frankly, a lot like any other room in this house. Just like the coffee table laden with old newspapers on the ground floor, there's a considerable amount of clutter here. Against three of the walls and in the center of the room there are tables set up, all strewn about with papers and books. There's a computer and a typewriter (he's not entirely sure why she thinks she needs both), the new one Ikuko got in the mail a few months ago, both sitting on the table against the back wall. There are brown cardboard boxes all on the tables and under them. There's a purplish stain on the carpet near the right-hand back corner of the room, apparently so stubborn that even Harumi's carpet cleaner couldn't get it out.

And just like the rest of the house, this room is lavishly furnished. The tables are of a dark, rich wood—what parts of the surface Toya can actually see have been polished to a high gleam. The chairs are softened with green and silver brocaded cushions. A Persian rug sits under the table in the center of the room; each table is adorned with a glittering Tiffany lamp. Hanging on the wall is a picture of a dark-haired woman sitting on a balcony of some sort, staring up at the moon.

Toya has to admit, it's not quite as grand and magnificent as he expected. Ikuko's sense of disinterested grandeur strikes again; her furniture is elegant, and frankly looks older than she is, but it does not immediately strike the eye as magnificent. The fact that there are books, papers, and what on close inspection proves to be a plate with crumbs and some dried-on sauce on it, strewn all about, doesn't help, but even if the room was clean and neat, it still wouldn't be immediately assessed as impressive.

Sitting with her back to him, at the table at the back of the room in front of the window, Ikuko does not turn around to greet him; she seems far too absorbed in her writing—for she is writing something—to do that. Instead, she waves her left hand all about the room. "The book should be in here somewhere. Please feel free to search for it—just don't break anything, and anything you pick up, please put it back where you found it."

"Ikuko, I could be searching in here for a thousand years and not find it," Toya protests, staring around the room for any sign of the desired book, and doesn't find it. "Can't you give me some sort of hint?"

"I'm afraid I can't," she answers inattentively; the sound of a pen scratching against paper fills up the spaces without sound. "Now please, search as long as you need to."

Toya supposes that it's a testament to how absorbed she is in whatever it is she's doing that Ikuko doesn't lead him on a merry chase of misdirection before admitting that she has not a clue where the book is. Or maybe he's just being paranoid in thinking she'd do something like that; he's not sure, and at this point, he doesn't care.

Sighing at the daunting nature of his task, Toya starts sifting through the stacks of papers, looking for _The Hound of the Baskervilles. Good grief, there's paper everywhere. And what is that? Oh, it's a candy bar wrapper. Good God, Ikuko, do you _ever_ throw anything_ _away?_

Well, he finds a number of books. _The Phantom of the Opera _and _Jane Eyre _are here; so is _The Man in the Iron Mask, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, _Ikuko's "diary", and many others. Toya finds books in the most unexpected of places. He finds them in the middle of stacks of paper. He finds them wedged up between boxes and the wall. He finds two books sitting under the small, metal waste bin. There's even a stack sitting quite precariously on the sill of one of the two open windows—Toya wastes no time in rescuing them and putting them in a more secure spot; Ikuko never even looks up.

He finds all of these books hidden away in the room, but not anywhere can he find _The Hound of the Baskervilles_.

Standing next to Ikuko, staring about the room and feeling the soft, late-spring/early-summer breeze hit the back of his neck, Toya sighs and grimaces. He supposes he should have known better than to have gone looking for _anything _in a room occupied primarily by Ikuko. Either she was mistaken and the book's not here, she was lying and the book's not here, or the book _was _here, but it's been eaten by some sort of paper monster. Or stolen by gremlins.

_Well, this is frustrating. I suppose I can wait for it to turn up, but that could take forever, and I don't _want _to wait. God, I feel like some toddler screaming "I want! I want! I want!", but I really don't want to wait for the book to turn up. I don't want to read anything else._

In a moment, though, Toya finds himself having to revise that opinion.

Driven by curiosity, Toya's eyes stray to the paper Ikuko has been blackening with ink. There, he sees her long, elegant script, marked out with blotchy lines, with arrows leading to notes written in the margins. He looks at it and frowns. He'd expecting her to be filling out order forms or paying bills, but this doesn't look that. There's dialogue, and people with Western names. If anything, this looks a lot like a narrative.

Wait.

It _is _a narrative.

"Ikuko, do you write?" Toya asks incredulously.

She nods. "Well, yes, I write. You write too, you know, unless there's something you're not telling me and that sector of your education was just left woefully unfulfilled."

Toya bites back the urge to tell her that misdirection over something like that is unattractively petty. "Okay, let me be more specific," he says sarcastically. "Do you write _stories_?"

Ikuko pauses, putting down her pen. She never makes eye contact with him, instead swallowing a bit harder than she ought to. "Yes, yes I suppose I do," she says quietly.

Toya can't help but be startled by how subdued she is with that statement. You'd think that Ikuko, upon the revelation that she is a writer, would express a bit more pride in her abilities. If anything, Toya can't help but think that that would have been one of the first things she revealed about herself to him. After all, she sets so much store by books, and seems to hold authors in such high esteem, that you would think that, if she could count herself as a writer too, she wouldn't hesitate in letting her housemate know. Of course, maybe her pride was simply outweighed by the desire she seems to have to keep as much as she can about herself a secret—Toya can see how Ikuko's rapacious desire to hoard knowledge might outweigh her pride.

Or maybe, for some other reason, she's simply genuinely uncomfortable with Toya finding out about her writing habits.

Whatever the reason he's just finding out about this now, every passing moment only serves to stoke the fire of curiosity in Toya's belly. "So you like to write, then?"

She nods, still not looking at him. "Yes, I do, ever since I was a girl."

Toya frowns. For the life of him, he doesn't think she's ever supplied any information about her childhood before. "Have you written lots of stories?"

"Oh, yes."

"Can I read one?"

At that, Ikuko looks up at him sharply. "What?" And it's not a sharp, interrogative "_What_" either. The tone of her voice can only invite him to assume that she's genuinely surprised by his question. Her eyes are open significantly wider than their usual half-closed state; what on another person would appear normal is for her distinctly abnormal.

Toya's frown deepens. "You're acting very oddly, Ikuko."

Finally, some trace of the normal Ikuko surfaces, in the form of that cat-like smirk he's come to know so well spreading across her lips. "Given that 'normal' is such a subjective word—and really quite a loaded one, don't you think?—I don't think you should be slinging around words like 'oddly' around so readily. You really have no idea how easily the use of such words can backfire on you."

To this, Toya can only stretch a game smile. "I'll keep that in mind, Ikuko. Now, can I read one of the stories you wrote?"

"I don't see why not," Ikuko answers all too blandly. Really, it's like she's trying to shove all her emotions into a little box in the back of her mind where she won't be troubled by them. It suddenly occurs to Toya to remember that she is incredibly sensitive to criticism. "Check one of the boxes. They'll be in manila folders; the finished copies will have been typed."

This Toya does, pulling the top off of the box closest to him. Inside are about thirty manila folders, none of them with anything on the folder itself that would differentiate one from another; _You'd think she'd be more careful about that; what if she needs to find something? _Toya pulls out one folder, but when he opens it finds that it's all in Ikuko's spidery handwriting instead of plain block letters.

Another one reveals typing instead of handwriting. _'A Night in the Hanover Maze.' _"How about this one?" he asks, handing Ikuko the folder.

Ikuko opens the folder, brow slightly furrowed, but the moment her eyes scan the title, she slams the folder shut. "No," she mutters, fingers tightening over the manila. "No, no, I'd really rather you didn't read this one." A shadow passes over her face, and, laying the folder down on the table, stands to go looking through the box herself. "I'll find one for you, Toya."

She takes one out. "No, this is no good. I barely remember anything about this one—I'd have to read it again and look over my notes to have a good grasp of what I was trying to achieve here."

Another. "No, not this one either."

Finally, Ikuko finds a story she seems to be alright with him reading, and holds it out to Toya, that familiar, secretive smile stretching her lips. "I hope you enjoy it. Now please, I need to work. Tell me when you're done. If you hoard my writings, I'll be very upset with you."

And with that, she sees him out.


	17. By Its Cover

_By Its Cover_

* * *

Toya sighs as he reaches over on his bedside table for the copy of the manuscript Ikuko allowed him to read. _Well, best to get this over with._

He's been putting off finishing reading this short story of Ikuko's for days, making up constant excuses for why he shouldn't read the story just then—having a book to read, a walk on the beach, watching a movie, making something to eat, and on. No matter how much he logically knows he should get on to reading Ikuko's story, Toya just keeps avoiding it.

It's not that the story isn't good; Toya would like to make sure that that is very, _very _clear. If anything, it's excellent—not without its flaws, of course—for what Ikuko termed dismissively as "an early work." The story quality itself is not the issue. Quite the opposite; Toya finds that he's actually enjoyed reading it tremendously.

No.

Unfortunately, it's Ikuko who's the issue.

Though she simply loves to put up a front of being this imperturbable, mysterious, ever-beautiful, ever-young lady, it didn't take Toya long to identify Ikuko as a person who is incredibly sensitive to criticism. What's worse, she's not just sensitive to legitimate criticism, she's sensitive to anything she _perceives _as criticism, whether it's actually criticism of her and her activities or not.

She's painfully thin-skinned to any comments that could be interpreted as less than complimentary to herself, be it about her appearance (especially her appearance), her cooking, her clothing and jewelry, the books she reads and what that says about her, and on and on and on. Toya's learned to be careful about the sorts of comments he makes towards her if she's not in a good mood; it's safer that way, the better to avoid the inevitable needling comments from her end that would come if she thought she was being criticized.

These stories, they're more than just things Ikuko writes to fill the time. They're her creations, her labors of love, her, her… _Come on; say it. It sounds stupid, but it'll be worse if you drag it out. _They're her _babies_. Ikuko's stories are her children in the place of children of the flesh. She doesn't see the flaws in her stories; she only sees the bits of her soul she stitched to the paper in the form of words. She sees the expanse of her soul reflecting like a mirror in this paper, and as far as criticism is concerned, one reallyshouldn't go mucking about with mirrors.

And so no, Toya is not looking forward for the moment when he finishes the story, hands it back to Ikuko, and she demands to know _"What did you think of it? Please be honest_," she'll say, even though she doesn't want to be criticized and they both know it.

But then, even though she's likely dreading the moment of truth as much as he is, Ikuko has been getting increasingly pushy about Toya finishing reading the story so he can tell her what he thought of it.

At first, the hints she dropped were relatively subtle. Just a casual "_Have you finished reading it yet?" _over breakfast or supper, her voice barely rising from its normal octaves. As each day passed and Toya replied _"I'm almost done_," her lips would grow thinner every time she asked. Her fingers would clench her coffee mug or her teacup or her crystal glass.

Finally, this morning over breakfast, when once again the ritual of "_Have you finished reading it yet?" "I'm almost done" _was observed, Ikuko had had enough. Boring holes into his skull with those purple eyes of hers, Ikuko said, rather tetchily, _"Toya, you've been saying 'I'm almost done' for the past week. Please expend your efforts to finish it _today_. I want that manuscript back."_

And thus, here he finds himself.

If he just doesn't finish it and hands Ikuko her manuscript back without having ever read the last few pages, the climax, she'll notice. She'll ask him what he thought, and he'll only be able to give an incomplete review—and after all, don't authors want to know what readers thought of the climax, of the final plot twist, of the resolution, more than anything else? And if Toya ends up having to reveal that he didn't get that far, she'll assume that he had disliked it so much that he simply couldn't bring himself to finish it. That wouldn't be good.

Finding himself neatly trapped, Toya flips back to page twenty, and resumes reading the ongoing struggles of John and Camilla Latimer.

-0-0-0-

Toya knocks on the door to Ikuko's study, frowning as he rehearses the plan to himself, one last time. _Be polite. Be complimentary. Don't volunteer information that she doesn't ask about. Keep the conversation as short as possible. And for God's sake, don't mention—_

"Come in," Ikuko calls.

_Okay, here I go._

Shutting the door gently behind him, Toya enters Ikuko's domain, and finds it even more cluttered than it was the last time he was here, the table in the center laden down even more with scattered papers, butter-yellow sticky notes, scribbled-on index cards, and so on. He approaches her at the back table, and watches her yellow-clad right arm fly across the paper in front of her, pen in hand.

"Here." Toya extends the manila folder out towards its owner. Ikuko's eyes scan the folder uncomprehendingly for a moment, blinking away the bleary myopia brought on by poring close over paper for hours. Then, in a flash, comprehension dawns and she dons that vivid smile so unlike her feline smirk.

"Oh, you've finished it, then?" Ikuko gathers up the folder, holding it to her chest the way a mother would her infant child. Her eyes are especially piercing today; Toya's made to feel rather as though she's attempting to set his hair on fire.

He nods. "Yes, I have."

"What did you think of it, then?" she asks eagerly, still wearing that odd, uncharacteristic, almost child-like smile.

_Good God, how could anyone try to deflate that smile? _Toya doesn't have to force a smile of his own, because on this score, he's not lying. "I think it's pretty good."

"Really? I mean, did you like the part when…"

As she goes on and on, drilling him for information with all the mercy of a professional torturer, Toya gives the most perfunctory answers he can, using five words when he could have used seven, careful not to let anything slip that might spoil Ikuko's good mood. She doesn't always seem completely satisfied with his short, almost reticent answers—a subtle thinning of the lips is detected, a hard gleam in her eyes—but all in all, she seems happy to hear Toya's verdict, seems happy to have someone read her stories for the first time, if ever, in a very long time.

And Toya is content to let her be happy, and not point out the flaws in the story.

Okay, there was the presence of one or two rather hackneyed plot elements. And sometimes, the dialogue seemed a little forced—it just doesn't _breathe_, sometimes, the way some of the books have been able to make their dialogue seem so real, so true to life.

And really, stories as heavily plot-driven as this one have always bothered Toya on some level. In strongly plot-driven stories, the characters don't seem like people so much as they seem like little bisque dolls being yanked about by some unseen celestial entity for their own amusement. Toya likes it better when his characters have some semblance of agency, when the plot is moved along by their choices, not by some conjunction of the stars above. There's just something so… _contrived _about plot-driven stories. It's harder to maintain a consistent characterization for your cast when you're making them move about with no concern for whether their choices in the story would be consistent with what you've already established about their personalities, their ethos.

But ah well. Toya's not the writer, and Ikuko's not writing with the intent to change the way the world thinks of literature and the people in it. And it really was quite good, overall.

No need to tell her any of that.


	18. Serrated Edges

_Serrated Edges_

* * *

Toya has come to the conclusion that Ikuko has forbidden Yoko and Harumi from moving anything on the tables in her study. Given the way he's seen Harumi assiduously struggle to remove that old purple stain from the carpeting in there, and from the amount of pride Yoko takes in her dusting, that's the only he can imagine that they would allow the state of affairs that exists in this sanctum of Ikuko's.

Therefore, he's taken it upon himself to discreetly (or what he thinks of as discreetly) search through the room for any trash or anything, like an old glass or plate, that needs to be moved out of the study and cleaned. Toya can only assume that the reason there are no ants in here owes everything to Harumi's spraying of the upstairs with various insect repellents, a suspicion that is borne out by the amount of crumbs and old cellophane wrappers, many of them still sticky with their long since consumed contents.

_How can anyone be so careless about keeping their rooms clean?_

Toya doesn't know why he's reacted so strongly to the squalor in Ikuko's study as to go to the trouble of cleaning it for her when she's not looking. He's not what he would term a neat freak; alright, he likes for the floor to be clear of clutter and can't stand to have dirty dishes in his room, but that's it. Toya doesn't mind a thin layer of dust (not that he's ever had to deal with that, so no telling how he would _actually _react if he had to deal with dust) and he doesn't mind going around with an ever-so-slightly crumpled shirt collar (Though he certainly doesn't like to get stains on his clothes). Toya hadn't thought he would ever be so thoroughly offended by the state of affairs in a room not his own that he'd be driven to clean it.

But he has. And he is now, while Ikuko scribbles out little notes and rhymes, having accepted him again into her study but having since become quite oblivious to his presence. Toya finds a Cinnamon Bun wrapper stuck to the underside of a piece of paper in a stack on a side table; he peels it off, wrinkling his nose all the while at the way the wrapper infects his fingers with its stickiness. The paper hasn't come away unscathed; a bit of it peeled away with the wrapper, Ikuko's nearly incomprehensible writing (she must have been tired when she wrote it; normally her handwriting is quite legible) going blank in a spot near the bottom right hand corner.

After a slightly nervous glance at Ikuko—Toya can't help but imagine that she might have some sort of radar for this thing—he puts the paper back where he found it and continues to search, telling himself that, the next time he finds a wrapper stuck to a piece of paper (because there _will _be a next time), he'll have to peel it off more gingerly.

So the great trash hunt continues.

Two cellophane wrappers, a smattering of crumbs and a wine bottle with the dregs of some dark drink still present at the base later, Toya finds himself looking about the room, wondering where he should search next. Eventually, his eyes light on a particularly ponderous stack of papers and boxes on the table on the left hand side of the room and beneath it.

While Toya roots through the stacks of papers, looking for things that need to be discarded in the waste bin, something on the floor, leaning against the wall, flashes in the light and catches his eye.

He bends down under the table, and, resting against the wall, he sees a picture in a picture frame. Frowning, and musing that this must have been what hung on that nail sticking out of the wall, Toya reaches for it and draws it out where he can look at the picture more clearly.

The picture is a photograph with four teenagers all in school uniforms standing single file against a blackboard. With a jolt, Toya realizes that the girl standing second from the left is Ikuko. She looks much the same then as she does now—same haircut, same thin-lipped, catlike smile—but with a slightly less formed face.

The only boy in the picture, brown-haired and smiling as though he's really not used to it at all, stands roughly half a head taller than her, and head and shoulders above the other two girls, both of whom are quite short. The girl standing next to Ikuko has grayish-blue curls and a serious expression. The girl standing next to the boy has her long blue hair (_Really? That's some sort of color to be dying your hair; the other girl, too…) _in pigtails and wears an unpleasant, slightly manic grin.

_Huh. I wonder what this is about._

_I think I'll ask her._

"Hey, Ikuko? What's up with this picture?"

"Hmm?"

"What's up with this picture?"

"Bring it over here," Ikuko says absently, and Toya crosses the room to hand it to her.

For a moment, Ikuko stares down at the picture as though she's trying herself to figure out what it is, what she was doing there and who the people standing with her are. Then, a dawning of recognition flares in her eyes. "Oh, I'd wondered where this had gone. It must have fallen off of the wall."

"Ikuko." Toya frowns at her. "Why were you standing for this picture?"

She waves a hand dismissively. "You don't want to hear that," she remarks, in a tone clearly designed to pique his curiosity.

It works. "Yes, I do."

"Really, Toya, the story is just far too boring and commonplace," Ikuko remarks loftily. "It's the sort of thing that would drive you to tears just listening to it." She casts a sideways look at him and smirks. "But if you really want to hear it, I'll tell you."

Ikuko places the picture frame down on the table in front of her. "This was my high school's book club. As you can see, there were four of us—the school was mostly populated by philistines who cared more about soccer than literature," she adds in a practically patented stage whisper.

"From the left, there is Dlanor Knox, myself, Willard Wright—he much preferred to be called Will—and Furudo Erika. Yes," she confirms, when she sees Toya's sudden grin, "Dlanor and Will's fathers were friends, they were Americans, and they were both the most ridiculous mystery lovers. Dlanor's father in particular seemed determined to scar her by giving her the most ridiculous, ill-conceived name he could think of. And no—" she's spotted the question mark on his face "—neither Dlanor nor Erika have dyed their hair. Frankly, in Erika's case I'm not entirely sure you could achieve that shade of blue with hair dye."

So Ikuko was in a school club. Frankly, this sounds like a recipe for disaster. Toya says so, and for a moment Ikuko looks as though she would like nothing better than to laugh.

"Ah, you give me too much credit, Toya." A sharp, almost sadistic gleam makes her eyes shine all too brightly. "They didn't need me to fall into complete pandemonium. Usually it just took Will and Erika for that."

"Care to elaborate?"

A beatific, _utterly _sadistic smile spreads over Ikuko's face; she smoothes down her moss green skirt and tugs at the pearls gleaming at her throat. "Well, every time we met, we would select a mystery novel that none of us had read before, and read a certain number of pages, and then meet again to say who we thought was the culprit and give our reasoning as to why we thought that way."

Frankly, _that _sounds like a recipe for disaster, too.

A sweetly amused little giggle escapes from Ikuko's mouth and the hand perched modestly over it. "Oh, yes. Well, you see, Erika was a perfectly ruthless truth seeker. Whether it was in the books she read or in real life, she had to know every little secret, big or small, and proclaim them to the world. Nothing was taboo to her, nothing at all. Her tongue was like a brutal little knife; it cut everything it came into contact with. And as for the suspects in the books she read, well, she could ascribe nothing but the worst motives to them. They couldn't do anything innocent in her eyes!

"As far as books are concerned, Will used to be the same way. But eventually he became so disgusted with Erika's habits that he felt drive to play Devil's advocate, and eventually he became a Devil's advocate in truth. He felt inclined to excuse suspects caught doing questionable things so long as they weren't blatantly obviously criminal. He often denounced Erika for her mercilessness."

"_Intellectual rapist!" Will shouts, so the other patrons in the café stare at him, pointing a finger at Erika._

"_I am _not _an intellectual rapist," Erika hisses through gritted teeth, an ugly flush rising in her cheeks. She pushes Will's finger away, for it was dangerously close to jabbing her nose. "_I _am a truth seeker, one who seeks to uncover secrets no matter how deeply buried. _I _care about finding the truth, unlike _you_, Mr. Bleeding Heart!"_

"Dlanor, who was a far more impartial judge than either of them, could, depending on what conclusion she had come to, end up taking either of their sides. However, usually she was the one calming them both down, or trying to, at least. She had a great deal of respect for Will, but Erika was Dlanor's best friend—indeed, she was Erika's _only _friend. As a result, Dlanor was often caught in the middle during their little grudge matches."

Ikuko's eyes glaze over as though recalling a particularly enjoyable afternoon. "I remember one particular discussion, where things got so nasty between the Will and Erika that Erika threw a chair at him. The situation only deteriorated from there."

Toya snorts. "And let me guess, you were just sitting there, watching the fireworks."

She tilts her head diffidently. "Maybe."

In truth, Ikuko usually read the whole book the night it was assigned and would feign ignorance of the ending while watching with secret or not-so-secret amusement as the others would give their, in Erika's case often completely off base, guesses as to who the culprit was, and then watch with open amusement as Erika and Will started arguing, then shouting, then throwing things, then throwing fists. Okay, they didn't often get past "shouting", but then, it was always more amusing when they got to the "throwing fists."

And maybe, Ikuko would give the already deteriorating state of affairs a little nudge.

But then, it was always more fun like that.

* * *

The idea of Ikuko, Will, Dlanor and Erika in a high school book club is the sort of ridiculous, inherently hilarious (at least I think so) thing that begs getting a story of its own, even if only a oneshot. I mean, you have the intellectual rapist, the guy who hates intellectual rapists, the only one who's on speaking terms with them both, and the sadistic observer who just _really _likes to watch for the inevitable explosion. Instant show.


	19. Writer's Block

Sorry for the wait. I was in North Carolina for a whole, glorious week, and while I did work on other things while I was there, I didn't feel like applying myself to my main project. What can I say? I was on vacation, and even for more than a week after I got back, I still felt like I was in "vacation mode."

* * *

_Writer's Block_

* * *

The summer heat has become particularly murderous; even the promise of the cold water of the ocean wasn't enough to lure Toya from the house. Alright, the fact that there are tourists out on the shore right now doesn't help at all. If anything, the prospect of having to talk to strangers makes Toya balk at the thought of leaving the house even more than the heat; if not for the presence of the tourists, he might even brave the suffocating humidity to get to the icy seawater.

As it is, he's taken refuge in Ikuko's study, yet again. Not cleaning, not leafing through her myriad manuscripts, not any of that; he just leans against a table and lets the humming blast of the desk fan ruffle his short white hair. That's all he wants to do right now.

Even Ikuko has succumbed to the heat, enough to start going around slightly less overdressed than she had been before. In place of the long dress or long-sleeved shirt and long skirt combo she would normally wear, she is today wearing a short-sleeved lavender blouse and a knee-length skirt, and looking rather out of place without any jewelry at all, not even a ring or a pendant around her finger or neck. The fact that the top button has been left undone is odd too.

But what's the oddest about the scene that sits before him—Ikuko at her desk, poring over paper and pen, really quite a familiar sight by now—is the fact that she's not writing. She's tapping the butt of her pen against the desk, sporting a contorted look of frustration.

Toya frowns. To see Ikuko sitting at her desk, cupping her forehead with one hand and staring down at a piece of paper as though trying to make it spontaneously combust, instead of scribbling furiously. Normally, by this time in the day she would filled up five pieces of paper—the local paper company, or whatever it's called, must _love _her—with her writing, even if it was just jotting down dead-end ideas and notes that don't go anywhere. But as far as Toya can see, she hasn't written anything at all today.

Very odd indeed.

With some measure of caution (you never know; Ikuko might try to thrust her pen out at him like a knife if he annoys her), Toya approaches the decidedly irked-looking authoress. _What's up with her? _After a moment of indecision, he comes to rest a hand on her shoulder. "Ikuko? Ikuko, what's wrong?"

Ikuko doesn't answer. Instead, she continues to stare at the paper, brow furrowed. Toya begins to contemplate the possibility that she really is trying to make the white sheet spontaneously combust.

Might as well try again. For all the tapping of her pen, Ikuko's not showing any signs of itching to jump to violence.

"Ikuko?"

More silence.

Now it's Toya's brow that's furrowed, along with hers. "Come on, Ikuko, say something." Something different, then. He waves a hand in her face. "Earth to Ikuko. Repeat, Earth to Ikuko. Earth to Ikuko, come in Ikuko." No give. "Come on, you're starting to scare me."

Okay, this isn't working. It's quite obvious that Ikuko has fallen into some sort of catatonic state in which the only movement she makes is the incessant tapping of her pen against the table. If he wants to bring her out of this state, Toya's going to have to say something… Something…

Well, something ridiculous enough to bring Ikuko out of her catatonia.

That shouldn't be too hard, should it?

"I've got a bunch of wild raccoon dogs living in my trousers," he tries. No response. Well, okay. She probably figures that one was too stupid to merit answering.

Another one. "England recently fell into the sea; we were all very shocked."

Silence.

"They're repealing the gun laws. Russia has fired nuclear missiles on America. Japan has announced plans to take over the world through the power of the liberal media."

"Well that's just ridiculous," Ikuko responds automatically. "We'd just be made a laughingstock."

Toya's face breaks into a relieved smile. No more worrying about catatonia. "Oh, so you are still speaking. I was starting to worry."

Ikuko's mouth twists in a pointless expression; Toya can't tell if it was meant to be a grimace or a smile, but either way it's hideous. She sighs and lays her pen down on the surface of the table. "Have no fear, Toya. The day I stop talking is the day I die." Her usual whimsy is gone from her voice. She glares down at the blank piece of paper like it's called her a bad writer, kicked her cat, insulted her mother and given all of her jewelry to charity.

"So…" Toya still can't help but be a little cautious about addressing her, but now that she's acting somewhat normally again, his tongue has been loosened from the constraints of simply babbling. "Is there a reason you've been glaring at that piece of paper like you want to brutally murder it?"

"It's sapping my inspiration."

Toya tilts his head as Ikuko runs her hands through her hair and gnaws viciously at her lip. Her eyes are bright as twin sunlamps and twice as burning. The desk fan makes her hair pucker like a living thing plucking her flesh. "The paper… that piece of paper, right there, is sapping your inspiration." _One day, _Toya tells himself, _one day, someone will find a way to repeat a sentence someone else said without it sounding so pathetically feeble-minded. And when that day comes, I will be the first person to learn at the knee of the inventor._

_One day._

Ikuko sighs gustily and leans back in her chair; that lazy, inattentive look, along with her mussed hair, makes her appear more a disaffected teenager than the supposed grande dame of a beachside mansion on a remote island. "The more I stare at it, the less I'm able to think of anything to write. It's a fiend, Toya." She drums the paper violently, nearly spearing it on her fingernails. "It's a leech, sucking out all of my creative juices. I'd destroy it, but I've already done that to five other pieces of paper in the last couple of days, and it hasn't made a difference. I'm doomed," she declares morosely, in such a way that Toya can't tell if she's being serious or not.

Well, while Toya can't tell if Ikuko's being serious or not, either way, he is capable of reading between the lines. "So you have writer's block. Is that what you're saying?" he asks patiently.

Ikuko blinks a great deal suddenly, looking as though he's said something that never occurred to her before, or maybe spoken in French to her (Though Ikuko probably has a passing knowledge of French, given all the foreign language books in her library). Then, she breathes a deep, cleansing breath, reaches up to smooth down her hair, and nods. "Yes. Writer's block it is. A most dire and vile affliction," she mutters, finally giving in to the urge making her arms tense and balling up the paper in front of her, before lobbing it in the direction of the waste bin. The paper ball lands just shy of the rim, coming to rest against the bin.

Okay. That explains the buzzing aura of frustration all about Ikuko. Toya supposes that if writing was his main hobby, writer's block would probably be the bane of his existence too.

Toya grimaces. On the one hand, Ikuko likes being allowed to complain about things. It helps her get frustration out of her system, and God knows she'd be unbearable to deal with if she just went around the place grumpy every time something didn't go her way. But really, she needs to take her mind off of this if she wants to feel better.

"Well sitting here certainly isn't going to cure you of your writer's block," he points out bracingly.

For the first time today, that thin-lipped smile comes over Ikuko's face. "I wasn't aware you have become an expert on writer's block, Toya," she comments blandly. Her flashing eyes give him a good idea of what she's feeling behind that mild tone.

"I guess there are just things you don't know about me. Things _I _don't know about me, either. But I mean it, Ikuko. Just staring at a piece of paper like you want to use the power of your mind to blow it up is not going to get rid of your writer's block."

Ikuko swivels in her chair so she's staring up at him, her fingers steepled. "Then what would you suggest, Doctor?" she asks mockingly.

Toya shrugs. "Go outside and take a walk? Read a book, watch a movie? How about you try _not _trying to write until you've got your inspiration back? If you try to write something now, it's not going to be any good," he points out reasonably.

To this, Ikuko only snorts. "I suppose I could always go on a pilgrimage to Ishiyama-dera and stare up at the moon," she mutters, glancing fondly up at the wall hanging of a woman sitting on a deck, staring up at the moon. "No." She flashes a game smile at Toya. "No, I don't think it would be any good if I tried to write right now—thank you _so much _for your confidence in my skills."

In a single, fluid movement, Ikuko is up from her chair, and heading towards the door. "I think I am going to do something else," she calls from the doorway. "Mark my words, Toya, and remember them well: I _will _overcome my writer's block, even if it kills me."

With that, she is gone, slamming the door behind her.

"Here's hoping it doesn't," Toya mutters. "That would be pretty embarrassing to have written in her obituary. Or on her tombstone, at that. '_Here lies Hachijo Ikuko, age such-and-such, felled by writer's block.'_" He laughs quietly to himself, pleased with his little joke.

Then, Toya starts towards the door himself, pausing only to deposit the paper Ikuko had thrown in the waste bin.

_Someone's _got to make sure Ikuko doesn't hurt herself.

* * *

There are no words to describe how much I wish this site would allow for superscript so I could include _proper _footnotes.

1: Ishiyama-dera is a temple in the Shiga Prefecture in the Kansai region. According to the Wikipedia article, Lady Murasaki is supposed to have started writing her epic _The Tale of Genji _"during a full moon night in August 1004." If you haven't already guessed, the wall hanging in Ikuko's study is a picture of Lady Murasaki. Since she's supposed to have been the author of the first novel (written in the modern style), she seems like the sort of person Ikuko would look to almost as a patron saint.


	20. With Intent

_With Intent_

* * *

Five days later, Ikuko has made some small progress, though she certainly wouldn't believe that if told so, judging by the amount of paper she's balled up and tossed in the trash can. Her writer's block has abated to the point that she can think of plots and characters, but the malaise is still clinging fast enough that she can't make any of those plots or any of those characters actually go anywhere. And by Ikuko, if words aren't flowing out of her mind and the ink in her pen, it doesn't matter how far along she's gotten in the planning stage. She may as well not have anything at all.

Ikuko groans, running her hands through her hair as she tries to concentrate. She has the basic premise down. A group of five, a family, patriarch, matriarch and three children, two grown and one still in her teens, are staying at an island hotel that, apart from them, a few other guests and the staff, is totally deserted. A storm has cut off all contact to the mainland. The youngest child is kidnapped and is being held somewhere in the massive hotel. The guests and the staff are pressed to find the girl and discover the identity of her kidnapper.

This, Ikuko reminds herself, is a simple enough premise. The story ought to just leap off of her pen and onto the page; it ought to be _pouring _from her mind. And yet, when she tries to visualize the meat of the story, it's all blank. There is a solid, impenetrable wall between her and the as of yet unwritten existence of her latest story.

It's almost enough to make Ikuko go downstairs, retrieve a bottle of Merlot from the wine cooler and down it in three gusty swigs. Almost. She still remembers what happened the _last _time she did that. Ikuko had then vowed that she would never write anything while drunk again. She intends to keep that promise.

Tempting, though.

_Getting soused might help get the creative juices flowing, but the problem is that it also takes out all of my filters. I'd think the worst, the weakest, the most clichéd plot devices currently known to man were strokes of genius. And I like to be able to _remember _what I wrote. It makes editing things so much easier when I can actually remember how I came to the decisions I want to change._

Denied the soothing embrace of drink, and denied the all-important spark of true inspiration, all Ikuko can do is drum her fingers against the table, run her hands through her hair as if vacillating between the decision to leave it alone or rip it out, and push Bernkastel away when the cat paws at her leg, mewling piteously. Ikuko doesn't care what it is Bernkastel wants; the house could be burning down, and she wouldn't care.

The part of her brain that controls literary inspiration seems to be interested only in half-measures.

That part of her brain is mud.

-0-0-0-

Meanwhile, Toya, whose presence in Ikuko's study has gone completely unnoticed by the frustrated, itching-for-relief-or-maybe-just-a-stiff-drink authoress, looks up when Bernkastel's fruitless entreaties reach his ears.

He's been reading in the study again. Ikuko's slow-going recovery necessitates having someone around to calm her if she grows too agitated—if she was to get her hands on anything with the intent to defenestrate, the results would be quite regrettable. Also, Toya's starting to get just a bit tired of being alone all day. This kills two birds with one stone.

Bernkastel pawed inside the study through the half-open door, so noiselessly that Toya didn't hear her—not that that would be difficult, considering the steady roar of the vacuum cleaner in the hall outside. She stands at her master's feet, staring expectantly up at Ikuko and occasionally allowing her voice to be heard, but Ikuko, a study in ignoring others, doesn't seem to notice. Maybe she just doesn't want to deal with the cat at the moment; maybe she's too absorbed in her agitation to notice Bernkastel's suffering. Either way, the cat's mystery plight is ignored.

Two pairs of equally vivid blue eyes meet, and Bernkastel, apparently writing off Ikuko as a lost cause, pads over to Toya. She lets out a long, plaintive wail, looking far more abjectly miserable than Toya ever expected such a proud cat to admit to.

Toya sighs and puts his book down. If he doesn't acknowledge her, there's no telling what Bernkastel will do to get his attention. Rising stiffly from his chair (he's been reading, uninterrupted, for an untold number of hours), he hoists the cat into his arms. "Okay, what do you want?"

Bernkastel doesn't purr or look particularly contented when picked up (if anything she looks rather surly), but nor does she struggle or squirm in Toya's arms. Predictably, the cat stiffens as they enter the hall and all barriers between them and the vacuum's roar vanish, but she relaxes as Toya hits the stairs and the din grows more distant.

Upon reaching the ground floor, Toya deposits Bernkastel on the carpet. "No more free rides for you, kitty," he remarks whimsically.

A sharp flick of her long, fluffy tail tells Toya exactly what Bernkastel thinks of being called such an insulting nickname as "Kitty." Disgruntled, tail still twitching, she begins to stalk towards the front door, coming to a halt in front of the door, staring expectantly up at the doorknob as though she expects to use the power of her mind to pull it open.

"You can't want out," Toya says, as he undoes the lock. "It must be a hundred degrees out there."

It's true. The blazing summer heat has not abated, not even by a single degree, over the past week. The whole world seems to have been covered by a blanket of buzzing, oppressive heat. It's the sort of humid blaze that saps everyone exposed to it of the will do anything truly worthwhile. Even in this place, where the air conditioning is on at full blast and every fan in the house has been turned on, the adverse effects of the heat still seep in under the doors.

However, despite all that and despite her long, solid black fur, Bernkastel, it seems, does want out. Walking out with a certain slow dignity, Bernkastel doesn't seem to take heed of the vicious temperature as she begins to cross the yard. Toya shakes his head and shuts the door behind her. He doesn't know how she does it.

About that heat robbing those suffering from it of all their concentration, there does not exist in Toya much enthusiasm to go back to his book. By the time Bernkastel has distracted him, he'd gotten to the point where he was reading the same sentence over and over again, unable to move on.

He could watch television; there has to be _something _on worth watching. Television goes on whether you're listening or not. _That actually sounds pretty nice, _Toya muses to himself, eyes straying in the direction of the well-cushioned couch facing the television. He imagines sinking into the cushions in a half-awake, half-dreaming state, watching some B-list movie that's just interesting enough to keep him from changing the channel, but not so interesting as to actually encourage active engagement. He could just lie there for hours like that.

Just as he's on the verge of surrendering to his ennui, Toya realizes something. It's cooler in the study than it is in here; surprising, considering all the hot air that must be pouring out of Ikuko's ears. Even in the house, in such a spacious room as the living room, with hot sunlight pouring through the windows and heat radiating from the very walls, it's rather balmy. At least in the study, it will be properly cool.

_I guess it's time to go back to trying to read that book._

Hands in his pockets, Toya mounts the stairs, humming absently to himself. Upon reaching the second floor, the vacuum cleaner suddenly grounds to a halt.

Her hand poised on the stem of the vacuum cleaner, Harumi's wide brown eyes travel in the direction of the door to the study. "Yeah, she's still in there," Toya confirms; he supposes there are standing orders for no one to clean rooms in which Ikuko is currently in. Harumi smiles faintly—the first smile Toya's ever seen her give—and gets back to work.

Coming back into the study reveals Ikuko to be in the exact same position as when Toya left her; she's likely not noticed he was gone. Still agonizing over the details of her newest literary venture, still stuck in a corner with absolutely no way that she can see out.

_She's positively pitiable. _Toya will admit—though not to Ikuko's face—that he does take some small pleasure in seeing Ikuko as something other than her usual haughty self. Maybe that frustration will humble her; frankly, Toya seriously doubts that there exists _anything_ capable of humbling Ikuko. _It would probably take a horrible shock to her system for her to even contemplate becoming a more humble person._

No, Ikuko will stew in her frustration without taking anything constructive away from it, and when this famine of creativity has passed, she'll be triumphant, once again bearing that cat-smile and laughing that haughty little laugh. And Toya has to admit, she's probably never as happy as when she has something to lord over someone else—even if that something is a finished story and that someone is her own case of writer's block.

Ikuko doesn't seem to be having much luck at surmounting the mountain, though.

Toya looks at her, at Ikuko hunched in that chair and the black cloud of thwarted anger hovering around her shoulders. If he was to take his opinions of writing just from this image, he'd think it was a thankless occupation that was made up of tears, not joy. But Toya knows better.

What he knows, what he's learned, is that, by Ikuko at least, writing is the most fulfilling experience possible for those who want to build but don't have the means. Instead of building in the real world, whole worlds can spring up on the pages in front of them. For all the flaws present in her writing, Ikuko loves crafting worlds and creating people to populate them; that much is patently obvious from what he's read of her writings. When she's limited in her capacity to create universes in ink and paper, Toya supposes Ikuko has a right to be frustrated, the same way a singer would be frustrated if her vocal cords suddenly gave out or a footballer would be if he got a knee injury. And if she's lording her success over everyone if and when she gets over this, maybe she'll have a right to that too.

_Maybe I should try to help._

Toya contemplates this thought for just one second, and then shakes his head when he realizes the sheer lunacy of it. _What? No, no. Why would she let me dip my hands into her work? She's let me _read _her stories. Read them and critique them. It's not like Ikuko has ever intimated that she'd be willing to let me, ah, _assist _her in the writing process._

Oh, what the Hell. He shrugs, and starts towards her. It can't hurt anything to ask if she wants help, and Toya wouldn't mind getting in on the whole "world-building" thing himself. It seems like it could be fun.

Significantly less cautious than he had been the first day Ikuko was afflicted by writer's block, Toya puts a hand on her shoulder. "Ikuko. Ikuko, are you alright?"

No silent act this time. Ikuko waves a hand choppily, without looking at him. "As fine as can be expected, given my condition." She continues writing things down and scratching them out a second later, hissing through her teeth and shaking her head. The black ink glitters in the brilliant summer sunlight.

"Do you want some help?" Toya offers.

At that, Ikuko's eyes snap sharply on his face, narrowing. "And what, exactly, gives you the impression that I need to be helped?"

That tone of voice isn't nearly as daunting as it would have been five days ago, either. "The fact that you're clearly frustrated, and haven't been making a whole lot of progress?" he tries. "You're not exactly hiding it very well, Ikuko."

Ikuko presses her lips together in a thin, prim line. "I assure you, Toya, that I am more than capable of writing a story by myself. I've done so for a long time now, and I have _not _suddenly grown incapable of writing a narrative." Her tone of voice runs towards testy, but without the sort of sharp bite that promises real danger if he keeps on, so likely she's dismissed his probing as well-meaning but misguided attempts to make her feel better. Or maybe Toya's just misinterpreting all the signs, and she'll decapitate him with a letter opener if he pushes her too far.

Deciding that death by letter opener is just a risk he'll have to take, Toya presses on, relatively undaunted. "I'm just wanted to know about the writing process. It's not like you ever talk about _that_. I think I'd like trying to help you write a story."

For a long moment, Ikuko, eyes still narrowed, scans Toya's face, evidently checking him over for any sign of dishonesty. Given that Toya's never expressed such a desire to her before, he supposes she might have a hard time believing that he's suddenly been possessed of an interest in writing. Frankly, Toya's got a hard time believing it too, but he supposes it could be interesting. And it's better than trying to read that book in this weather.

After the silence (broken only by the squeak of the fan) has become almost unbearable, Ikuko nods slowly, tilting her head slightly away from him. "Okay," she says. Just the slightest note of the incredulous flavors her voice, but also existing is just a small spark of curiosity. "We'll start tomorrow."

Toya grins and nods. "Sure."

Success.

-0-0-0-

Ikuko never dealt well with "constructive criticism" or "proofreading" in high school. Of course, she's never dealt well with criticism or second-guessing period. Rationally, she knows her classmates and her teachers didn't mean anything personal by it, but she still had a tendency to take it as a massive insult to her work. They were saying that there was something fundamentally _wrong _with her work, be it a story written for Creative Writing or an essay written for another class. Maybe Ikuko's grades in Creative Writing weren't as high as they could have been, but that sort of insult simply couldn't stand.

She never handled being involved in group projects very well, either. Everyone always had a certain vision about the way a project was supposed to go, and no one was willing to compromise on that vision—especially not Ikuko. Either that, or the teacher's premise was so abominable that no one wanted to do _anything_. Often times, Ikuko ended up doing all of the work herself so it would look exactly the way she wanted it to—or, by senior year, none of it, since she simply didn't care anymore.

In her heart of hearts, Ikuko hopes this "collaboration" with Toya over the story she has planned goes well. If it doesn't she may be forced to scrap the story idea altogether, and though Ikuko will ruthlessly kill off characters in her stories, having to abandon a story idea is a far more wrenching decision.

There's another reason too.

Ikuko's still monitoring Toya for any sort of behavior that indicates he may be remembering more of his past or discovering behaviors from his past life. She's lately stopped taking quite so many notes since she hasn't learned anything new, but this sudden enthusiasm for writing out of him is interesting. Ikuko doesn't know if Ushiromiya Battler was a writer, or if he had any special passion for writing, but it will be worthwhile to figure out if this curiosity of Toya's is just a passing thing, or a more lasting interest. _Just another piece in the puzzle to him unlocking the truth of his identity. Oh, how fun._

Well, anyway, here's hoping Toya doesn't try to get Ikuko to change every last detail about her story. She'd hate to have to turn him into cat food.

-0-0-0-

Ikuko lays out the necessary papers as Toya sits down at the table in the center of the study with her. "Here is the basic plot that I have in mind. There are ten guests and five staff members at an island hotel. All connection to the mainland has been cut off by a storm, and the storm isn't showing any signs of letting up. A young girl from a family of five has been kidnapped, and the kidnapper says that they'll kill her if they don't find her by sundown tomorrow—the culprit doesn't want money or anything like that; they just want to see if the others are quick-witted enough to figure out where she is. Well, the killer _claims _they don't want money; the notes they're leaving about the hotel suggest that a cash gift might make it easier to find the girl." She sees Toya open his mouth and quickly adds, "They have no access to the mainland whatsoever. It's a closed circle—there are fifteen people on that island; no more. You start talking about mystery people that no one knew was there, and the story's credibility will just vanish."

Toya nods, understanding, and slides Ikuko's _dramatis personæ_. "Quite a line-up you've got here," he mutters.

The family of five is troubled. The father is a conflicted tyrant, demanding of his children while admitting inwardly that he is not a good father. The mother is a timid wife who never speaks up in her children's defense and is resented by all three of them as a result. The oldest son has dissociated himself from the family almost entirely; the second son strives for his parents' approval, but is more or less forgotten. They are present only because the patriarch of their family has promised to make the contents of his will known during the trip. The daughter, the kidnapping victim, chafes in her restrictive lifestyle and is counting the days until she's old enough to leave.

Among the other guests there is a young married couple. The husband is a doctor and the wife chronically ill. Even with a doctor's generous salary the wife's medical bills are eating a hoe in their income. They came to the hotel in the hope that the change in climate would help the wife's health.

There is present a disaffected accountant, bored with his life of crunching numbers. There is also a journalist recently embroiled in an ethics scandal, looking to avoid the heat while her case is investigated, and an aging college professor who laments that he never did anything worthwhile with his life.

Given the time of night when the storm hit, the fact that there are so few guests and that the hotel, for all its seeming grandeur, is on the verge of collapse, only a skeleton staff is present. There's the night manager, desperate to keep the hotel afloat. There's the desk clerk, who'd rather gossip with the other staff than man the desk. There's the cook with the shady past. There are fraternal twin siblings on the cleaning staff, who seem to know more than they're saying.

"So the culprit has to be one of these people," Toya murmurs to himself. "Could it possibly be that Momoka was responsible for her own kidnapping?"

Ikuko's response is immediate. "No," she denies, shaking her head vigorously. "That's lazy. If you go through all of this, all of this seeming peril, only to find that there never was any peril? That's just a cop-out. It doesn't work."

Toya supposes he understands that. If Ikuko actually published any of her works, he supposes readers would be disgruntled if, at the end of the story, they discovered that the entire plot was based on a petty piece of deception.

"And you've chosen the culprit already?"

"But of course." Ikuko smiles smoothly. She reaches up to tuck a few stray strands of hair behind her ear. "To not have in mind who I want to be the culprit would lead to a violation of Van Dine's First and Fifteenth Commandments."

At this, Toya frowns. _Van Dine's First and Fifteenth Commandments? What's she talking about? _He can only assume that Ikuko's referring to something related to writing mystery novels, but really, this is the first he's heard of any "Van Dine's Commandments." "'Van Dine's Commandments?'" he asks, shelving any desire not to look ignorant in front of Ikuko in favor of actually knowing just what she's talking about.

Her slanted violet eyes widen. "Ooh, you don't know?" A look of relish settles in Ikuko's slightly pink cheeks. "I'm amazed at you, Toya. You've read enough mystery novels to have noticed a pattern by now, haven't you? And I have nonfiction books that talk about Van Dine and Knox. I'd have thought you'd have heard about it by now."

"Ikuko…" _Here we go with the gloating. And who's Knox, and what does he have to do with this?_

Recognizing that she's gloated enough and that an explanation is in order, Ikuko smiles graciously and balances her fingertips on the tabletop. "In the early twentieth century, S.S. Van Dine and Ronald A. Knox, both eminent mystery novelists as you well know, wrote a series of rules, "commandments", if you will, for the writing of detective novels. Van Dine wrote twenty and Knox wrote ten; the rules from the two list overlap at some points. Personally, I treat them more as a set of guidelines, rather than ironclad rules, but they're important to keep in mind when you're writing a mystery story." Suddenly, Ikuko looks serious, more serious than usual. "They're solid rules; for the most part, they don't lead you wrong."

_Okay, that sounds reasonable. _Toya decides not to say anything stupid-sounding like '_I never knew that.' _That would just open him up to more ribbing. History lesson over, he gets back to the matter at hand. "And what are Van Dine's First and Fifteenth Commandments?"

"The First is _'The reader must have equal opportunity with the detective for solving the mystery. All clues must be plainly stated and described.' _I can't give clues as to the culprit's identity if even I, the author, don't know who they are."

"That makes sense. A reader will enjoy the story more if they're able to actively participate in it. And the Fifteenth?"

"'_The truth of the problem must at all times be apparent—provided the reader is shrewd enough to see it,'_" Ikuko rattles off expertly. She tilts her hand in the air. "Basically, you should, on second reading of a mystery novel, be able to spot all the clues that were pointing towards the culprit. If even the most expert mystery reader can't spot clues pointing towards the culprit on second reading, or recognize that something is a clue on first reading, that's more likely to be the result of bad writing on the part of the author, than stupidity on the part of the reader."

Toya nods, staring past Ikuko and at the wall. He's braced his elbow on the table, balancing his chin on his fist. The existence of 'rules', or, as Ikuko would call them, '_guidelines'_, is actually a rather comforting thing. If he ever writes something on his own, something related to the mystery genre, at least he won't be all out on a sea of literary possibilities without any sort of star map to guide him. Then, he looks at Ikuko again. "Since we're talking about the culprit, are there any more "commandments" pertaining to said culprit?"

"Hmm, I was wondering if you'd get to that." Ikuko nibbles on her lower lip as she apparently gathers up all the commandments concerning culprits in her mind. "Well, the detective can not be the culprit. The culprit has to be someone introduced early on, and can not be anyone whose thoughts we're allowed to see; that's why I prefer to only have one viewpoint character in my work. Nobody in law enforcement can be the culprit either. The culprit's identity can't be discovered by accident or a coincidence or "unmotivated confession." The culprit has to have played a prominent part in the story; it can't just be a throwaway character mentioned briefly at the start of the novel and no time after that until they're revealed as the culprit. The culprit can't be a servant—they can't be anyone who is subordinate to the detective. There can only be one culprit; the most anyone else can do is be a minor accomplice. Finally, the culprit can't be someone who is otherwise already a professional criminal; that's just boring, don't you think?"

"Why can't a servant be the culprit?" Toya asks, frowning.

Ikuko shrugs. "Van Dine's commandments say that the culprit must be someone who wouldn't normally fall under suspicion, but if you ask me, I think it's just a cliché to have a servant as the culprit. I mean, that's just another case of "The butler did it!" It doesn't work anymore. It's been beaten to death. Leave its corpse be."

At this moment, Toya asks a question that's been nagging at him for nearly as long as he can remembers—less than a year, as it happens. "Ikuko?"

"Yes?"

"Is the butler really the criminal in so many detective novels?"

"It's a cliché, Toya. Let's leave it at that." The fact that Ikuko doesn't give him a straight answer, Toya can only assume, means that she doesn't know herself but doesn't want to admit it.

"So the culprit can't be the detective—Kaoru, Momoka's oldest brother, in this case. The servants have been ruled out, and so has the journalist, since she's suspected of ethics violations, and since you've specified that she's meant to be guilty."

Ikuko balances her pen in her fingers, nodding. "The journalist and the cook can't be the culprits because of their pasts. Their function is to serve as red herrings. The journalist's embroilment in the ethics scandal is well-known, and the night manager makes enough details about the cook's past known for the detective to know that he is a thoroughly unsavory person. They distract the detective from the true culprit, a person he would never suspect."

Toya narrows his eyes suddenly. "Ikuko… Is Momoka actually going to live through this?"

"The absence of a corpse would be a violation of Van Dine's Seventh," Ikuko replies, singsong.

_Well that's typical. I just hope the girl's death isn't too brutal. Ikuko can get pretty nasty about how she kills off her characters. _Figuring he'd better figure out now if there are any more "commandments" he needs to know about, Toya opens his mouth to ask, but Ikuko, displaying a moment of prescience, cuts him off. "I'll tell you if you run afoul of any more of the commandments. There's no need for me to spell them out for you."

"But I'll just be flying blind!" Toya protests.

A thin, sly smile spreads slowly across Ikuko's lips. She pauses, as if to savor the moment. "Oh," she breathes, the sunlight catching on her hair as she turns her hair, "but isn't it more fun that way?"

-0-0-0-

A week later, Toya finds himself frowning as he stands out on the back porch.

It's a fine summer's day. The heat has actually been warded off a little by recent rain—that's the only good thing about rain, Toya supposes, is that sometimes it can cut through oppressive heat instead of making it a thousand times worse with humidity. All in all, the weather's beautiful.

But then, that's not the reason Toya's frowning.

No, what Toya's frowning at is sitting in the rocking chair in front of him, sporting a floppy hat and oversized sunglasses, scowling halfheartedly and waving a hand at him languorously as if to say "_Get out of the sun."_

"Ikuko, aren't we supposed to be working?"

Over the past week they've gotten past the outline stage and have, in earnest, launched into the first draft stage. Ikuko's writer's block has been vanquished, vivisected, and its severed, rotting body parts now adorn the ramparts. Ikuko thinks that the disembodied head, sluggishly dripping gore, perched jauntily over the front porch will be an excellent deterrent for all Jehovah's Witnesses, Mormons, and insurance salesman. It'll give them a good idea of what to expect, she says.

They've written just shy of fifty pages. They've made excellent progress, or so Toya thinks; he's very pleased. This writing thing has actually turned out to be quite enjoyable, and he wants to continue on, but Ikuko, instead of being up in the study, ready to go, is out here, sunbathing and showing absolutely no sign of being willing to head back up any time soon.

"Not today." Ikuko doesn't seem to have even the energy to shake her head, though the petulant undertone in her voice definitely confirms Toya's suspicion that she wants him to step out of the sun. He's not going to. "Tomorrow."

There are beachgoers down on the shore. A child's shriek rises above the dunes and Toya flinches. Slightly rattled, he demands, "Why tomorrow? Why not today?" in a voice that Toya likes to think only shakes a little bit.

Ikuko sighs, the heaving, weary sigh of someone who has to regularly deal with someone considerably less intelligent than herself. Toya tries not to be insulted by that—too much. "Toya, there really _is _too much of a good thing. You need to take a break from writing once in a while or else you'll get sick of it. So go do something else and get out of my sun."

Toya rolls his eyes and heads back inside. He hopes she gets a sunburn.

-0-0-0-

Once alone and back in the sun, Ikuko smiles fondly—not without a touch of superiority, either. That boyish enthusiasm of Toya's is invigorating, but really, he has to learn not to take it too far. If one takes it too far, than even the thing they love the most will start to grow stale. Toya doesn't seem to realize that, however much he loves writing, if he does nothing but write for long enough, he'll come to hate it as he's never hated anything before. He'll resent the way it's come to dominate his life.

But all the same, that boyish enthusiasm he's suddenly developed is disarmingly charming.

Ikuko will give Toya credit where credit is due. Without his sudden interest in helping her write, she doesn't think she would have _ever _overcome her writer's block. Now though, it feels as though she was never afflicted with it at all. _I think I still prefer to do things on my own. But I'll admit, it's nice to have someone to bounce ideas off of. He even provides insight from time to time instead of just regurgitating my ideas back at me._

He's getting just a little antsy. She really can understand why Toya's so impatient to get moving, though, knows his feelings well. Those truly in love with writing may experience periods of creative drought, but they never come to permanently despise the subject. Even if they've had some sort of "traumatic experience" that puts them off writing, they still look back on the halcyon days with fondness.

Ikuko doesn't really suppose that Toya would come to hate writing if she worked him like a slave driver instead of an indolent instructor, but it's better, she reasons, not to push it. And for Heaven's sake, _she _needs a rest. Isn't _that _the most important thing?

"The young man wants to work me into the grave," Ikuko remarks to Bernkastel, who, like her owner, is stretched out in the sun, soaking up the warmth. The rise and fall of her furry chest is the only sign of life exhibited by the cat. Ikuko sinks deeper into her rocking chair, the material of her white sun dress rustling gently. "We can't have that, can we? Who would feed you then?"

As ever when Ikuko tries to hold a conversation with her cat, it ends up being totally one-sided.

Oh, Toya need not fret. They'll finish this story, he can be sure of that. In their own time, they'll finish it.

-0-0-0-

And when they do, the triumphant shouts emanating from Ikuko's study are so loud that Yoko, Harumi and Kaname, the latter of whom is actually outside, look up and wonder exactly what's going on.

-0-0-0-

Toya grins as he looks at the words _'THE END' _printed out in clear, bold letters on the page. Two words, just two words, oh, but never have two words before been so sweet in his eyes.

They've finished it. After an eternity (or what's closer to two and a half weeks, but whatever), the story is finished. The pace wasn't plodding and the culprit's identity was foreshadowed and hinted at, but not so much or so blatantly as to be obvious to the reader on first reading—just the right balance of subtlety. It even had a strong climax and resolution, or at least Toya thought so. It ends on a strong note, this story does, and he's more than happy to take partial ownership in it.

Ikuko sits back in her armchair, hosting a supremely satisfied cat-smile on her face. Toya casts a glance at the curvature of her pink lips and marvels at how much his understanding of it has changed. Before, he looked at that smirk and thought it saturated with a sense of unwarranted superiority—not enough to be offensive, but still something to marvel at for the sheer arrogance of it. Now, after this, after understanding the satisfaction that comes with completing a story of any length, he understands. If there's a look of superiority on her face, it's not unwarranted at all—she's triumphed over all the things that could have held her back.

And so has he.

So wrapped up in his elation is Toya that he doesn't hear the telltale whispering of long skirts until Ikuko is at the door. "Hey!" he calls after her, springing to his feet. "Where are you going?" Ikuko doesn't answer.

He follows after her, spotting as he goes the look of uncommon determination on Ikuko's face. Still, she makes no sign of acknowledging him, going in a straight line towards wherever it is she's going. Now slightly concerned, Toya continues to follow after her.

Eventually, Ikuko comes to the kitchen. Toya watches as she stops in front of a small refrigerator off to the side of the larger one. She leans down, opens the door, and pulls out a bottle.

It's not until she's set it down on the table and gone to get a glass that Toya realizes what it is.

"Champagne!" he exclaims, staring at the bottle enviously as Ikuko settles back down with a delicate champagne flute in hand. "You have champagne!"

"Hmm." She smiles widely, uncorking the bottle and tipping her glass gently before pouring the champagne inside. "Yes, I do. I want to celebrate my success." She looks up and grins hugely. "And you… You can't have any," she declares, giggling.

Well, that's a curveball. "What? Why not?" Toya demands, brow furrowing. He'd forgiven Ikuko for her forced rest day a week and a half ago, but here she goes again being weird.

More giggling hits the air as Ikuko takes a sip of her champagne and leans sideway in her chair. "When you came here you said you were eighteen. It's been less than a year. You can't be twenty yet. You can't have any," she says, singsong and unnervingly bubbly. Her long, dark hair dangles over the back of the chair. "You can't have any."

"That's crazy! I don't know how old I am; for all you know I _could _be twenty and you'd…"

Toya trails off as Ikuko's grin sinks in.

"Oh."

Ikuko claps a hand over her mouth as she giggles again. "You may get older, Toya, but one thing will never change. You will always be remarkably easy to fool."

Toya rolls his eyes, but he's smiling. "Yeah, yeah. Where's the—"

"Over there." Ikuko points in the direction of the cabinet where the champagne flutes are kept.

Smiling to himself, Toya retrieves a flute and pours himself some champagne.

Success tastes sweet. And fizzy.


	21. Quiet Shores

_Quiet Shores_

* * *

Toya wakes up to a morning doused in silver mist, where the cawing of the ocean birds, the wind through the sparse trees and even the roll of the surf seem muffled, muted. Another gray beachside morning, but unlike he usually would on such mornings, Toya does not roll over and go back to sleep.

Instead, he gets dressed in silence, combing down his hair without the aid of a mirror and ruffling Bernkastel's fur (she was perched at the foot of his bed), before heading downstairs and out the back door, as quiet as he can in the attempt to keep from rousing Ikuko, who is doubtless still fast asleep.

This autumn isn't quite so unseasonably warm as the last. As such, even the presence of a jacket and a scarf can't only entirely ward off the cold; the sandy wind keeps sending grit into his eyes. The upside to this is that there are no other beachgoers out today; apart from it being too early, it's far too chilly for the average sightseeing tourist.

Toya doesn't venture down to the shore itself. He stands at the edge of the porch, surveying all within sight—the sand dunes, the rocks, the rolling mist and the rocking surf. The salt smell makes his nostrils burn. It all seems so distant to him, like a hazy image revealed through a smokescreen, but he knows that all he needs to do to touch it is stretch out his hand.

_I make myself sound like God. _He smiles ruefully, ramming his hands ever deeper into his pockets; Toya's okay with the cold, but there is such a thing as having too much of a good thing. Besides, he didn't come out here, so early, to ruminate on nature or compare himself to God (_Ikuko's the one with delusions of grandeur, not me_).

He has just realized it recently. He's been living here for a year.

_A whole year. I can't believe it's been a whole year that I've been living here. It barely seems like any time's passed. Time just passes this place by. But it has been a year. I can't believe it._

It makes Toya smile to wonder how Ikuko would react if he was to point out to her that this is the one-year anniversary of his moving in with her. _"What, do you want a cake?" _he can imagine her asking pertly, slyness gleaming out of her slitted eyes. _"Do you want birthday presents? Or should I buy you roses? Perhaps you should buy _me _roses. Yes, I think that sounds nice. You should _definitely _buy me roses. A round dozen, blood red. And chocolate."_

_And then I'd tell her that this wasn't White Day, and point out that roses and chocolate are usually associated with romance. That would probably shut her up. Or, wait… No, she'd just tease me even more._

_Yeah, that's exactly what she'd do._

But as quickly as that smile crept up over his lips, it starts to vanish again as the reality of having lived here for so long leads Toya's thoughts in another direction.

He still remembers next to nothing about his past. True, Toya hasn't given serious thought to trying to find anything out in months, but you'd think that, maybe, he would have found out something else by now, even if he wasn't trying to figure out how to remember something about his past.

His memory only goes back a year. Beyond that, all is a blank, a gaping void that looms on the horizon like a black hole, fit to devour everything, even the stars. It feels like if he doesn't stop thinking, the amnesia will start eating away at his life past waking up as well. But he did stop thinking. He has stopped.

_And look, I'm fine. I still remember pretty much everything from the past year. There aren't any gaping holes in my memory from where the amnesia had a field day and decided to eat everything in sight. Look at me, I'm fine. I'm perfectly alright._

Does he really need to learn the truth of what his life was like before waking up here? True, that's all of Toya's childhood, hypothetical friends and family locked up in the abyss. It's a huge chunk, the vast majority of his life that he doesn't have anymore. His past identity is dead within the void, unable to find life to be lent to its heart.

There's a part of Toya that will always wonder what lies in that impenetrable blackness. It's the appeal of the unknown, his innate curiosity telling him to seek out that which he doesn't already have knowledge of. Plus, it's his _whole life _that's locked away behind that endless wall. Why shouldn't he be curious?

And why shouldn't he feel as though a huge part of him is missing, as though there's a hole in the very fabric of his being, that's only growing wider?

But lately, the struggle to regain his memories hasn't felt quite so desperately important as it used to. Lately, Toya has felt happy and content with the life he has, has barely noticed that yawning void within him. Lately, he's actually felt _normal._

Maybe he doesn't need to remember. Toya gets an image of himself living here for the rest of his life, without ever having any memory of the first eighteen years of his life, and thinks that that doesn't sound like the worst thing in the world. He could still live a fulfilling life here, with Ikuko and Bernkastel, just whiling away his years in the house by the sea that time forgot. Just fade away into old age and death, fade into the ether.

Would that really be so bad?

_No… It wouldn't._

Toya shuts his eyes as the blustery wind blows a wave of sand up on him. He brushes the sand away, smiling as he does so. His smile abruptly blooms into a full-blown grin. He feels free. He hadn't even known he was trapped, but unexpectedly, Toya feels so, so free. It's as though a thousand pounds of weight has been lifted from his shoulders, and he is no longer Atlas.

_I am not a nameless man with no memories. I'm Hachijo Toya, a year old. I have a friend named Ikuko and a cat named Bernkastel. I'll not find myself forever reaching towards the past. I'll live for a future I can remember. A future I can hold in my hand._

_I'll have an identity not bound to a murky past._

_I'll be me._

-0-0-0-

When Toya withdraws back inside the house, Ikuko is drinking black tea at the table and nibbling a coffee cake, the newspaper spread out before her. She looks up at the opening of the door, and narrows her eyes at him. "You look happy this morning, Toya."

"Yeah," he agrees. "I am."


	22. Bad at Chess

Just a short little fun one.

* * *

_Bad at Chess_

* * *

Given that it's too cold to go out and she doesn't want to write anything today, Ikuko supposes it's inevitable that she would go looking for amusement elsewhere. Thus, the attic.

As thunder shakes the very foundations of her home, Ikuko roots about her attic looking for anything interesting. And by "interesting" she means anything that could perhaps distract her for more than five seconds. Like a raccoon skeleton. Or undead raccoon skeletons. Or a box full of pretty clothes.

Sadly, Ikuko does not find zombie raccoons or an old dress-up box. What she's mostly confronted with is old Tiffany lamps and dust. _Remind me to get Yoko-san to start dusting in the attic. _She sneezes. _It really needs it._

Even so, she keeps on with her search. Boredom is, after all, the bane of Ikuko's existence (along with writer's block, pollen, and latex); she'll do anything to stave it off, including rummaging about in a dusty attic in the increasingly remote hope that she'll find something interesting.

Ikuko moves on to a deep cedar chest and, down on her knees, starts searching through it for anything of note. _Let's see. There's a photo album… another photo album… a portrait of some dead man I've never met… another photo album… Oh, for Heaven's sake! What's with all the photo albums? Surely there must be _something _of interest to me in here. Wait… What's this?_

Like Aladdin in his discovery of the djinn's lamp, Ikuko lifts a square, ornate dark rosewood box from the chest and rubs the dust away. Then, she lifts the hinged lid. The floor of the box is checkered black and white, and in the box are exquisitely carved ivory and ebony chess pieces.

_Oh, my old chess set. Ah yes, I remember now. I must have brought it with me when I moved here._

For the life of her, Ikuko can't understand why she would have brought her chess set here with her. It's not like there was anyone here she could play it with when she first moved in. _Who was I planning on playing this with? The servants? Or perhaps, by chance, I fancied that I could train Bern to play chess. _Ikuko snorts.

Of course, it wasn't like there was someone to play chess with a whole lot in her childhood home either. Mostly, Ikuko would take her chess set to school and ask Dlanor or strong-arm Will into having a match with her. Never Erika, though. Erika could play a mean game of chess, but when it came to competition, she was a sore loser and a bad winner; the satisfaction of beating her wouldn't have made up for the inevitable headache that would come later as Ikuko tried to prove to Erika that, no, she had _not _won by cheating.

But wait… A smile spreads slowly across Ikuko's lips, never a good sign. While there was no one to play chess with when she first moved here, there is someone here now with whom she can play the game of kings.

Time to go query a certain white-haired young amnesiac.

-0-0-0-

Toya can be found on one of the living room couches, huddled under an electronic blanket and reading a book. He looks up when Ikuko sweeps into the room, holding her chest set out in front of her. "I don't suppose it would be too much to ask for you to spring for a kotatsu." His eyes gravitate towards the box. "What's that?"

Ikuko's smile widens. _Good, he's showing curiosity. _"It's a chess set, Toya. Do you want to play?"

He doesn't exactly leap at the chance. Instead he frowns, a line forming between his blue eyes. "Chess… That's supposed to be the "intellectual's game", right? I don't know how to play."

Well, unless there was something Toya wasn't telling Ikuko, she wasn't _expecting _him to know how to play chess. "Learning how to play is half the fun, Toya. Just imagine; this will broaden the borders of your mind."

Toya laughs quietly and, eyes brightening, sits up. "Fine, fine. If you're going to be so pushy about it…"

For a moment, Ikuko can count herself rather miffed. _Pushy, me? Certainly not. _Then, a wave of triumph washes over her and makes all that meaningless. _Finally, I have someone to play chess with again. I'll have to write this down in my log, to see if he likes it or if he's good at it right away._

Ikuko sets the rosewood box on a patch of clear space on the coffee table—no small feat, all things considered—and plucks a blanket from the back of a chair to wear about her shoulders like a cape. Toya looks at the contents of the box with interest as Ikuko sets up the board. "Look," she commands once done, motioning at the board. "This is how you set it up; the pawns all go on the second row from the end. On the end row, you have rooks on the far outside. The knights are second from the end; then the bishops. On the inside, you have the king and queen."

She goes on, explaining what sort of moves the pieces can make. As she does so, Toya's eyes begin to burn with questions. "Alright, what is it? You look like you'll explode if you don't get to ask."

Toya looks uncomfortable for a moment, but soon overcomes it. "Why is the queen the most powerful piece, and not the king?"

"Because the inventor of chess was a forward thinker. Here, the white goes first." Ikuko turns the side of the board with the ivory pieces towards Toya, graciously allowing him to go first.

His eyes widen in alarm. "But that can't be all the rules!" Toya protests.

"Don't worry." She waves a hand and giggles. "I'll tell you if you try to make an illegal move."

The match is, in a word, short. Toya does not, as it happens, show any preternatural skill with chess that might have been a clue to his past life. Far from it, he's frankly, well…

How does "defeated in five moves" sound to you?

Soundly defeated, Toya stares at the board as though he can't quite comprehend what's just happened. And in all fairness, he probably can't; he is quite new to this, after all. He honestly looks rather crestfallen.

Telling herself that she shouldn't gloat at having won a game of chess against someone who can't remember ever having played it before, and frankly not finding it very satisfying anyways, Ikuko pats him on the shoulder. "Don't expect to win the first time. If you keep practicing, you're sure to get better."

Toya's response is immediate. "I want a rematch."

"I am only too happy to oblige."

This ought to be a good source of entertainment for the both of them. Until they get bored and want to do something else.


	23. Trying New Things

_Trying New Things_

* * *

One winter's day, Toya decides he's going to write a short story.

While he did get a great deal of enjoyment out of helping Ikuko write a short story a few months back, it could not accurately be said that this is a passion that's been building in him for months and has chosen now to explode. It can't even be said that it's a passion that's been building for _weeks _and has chosen now to explode. No. This is happening because Toya got bored. Nothing more to it than that.

Toya supposes that this could be a sign that he's starting to take on characteristics of his housemate. After all, Ikuko's made it quite clear that she'd do anything to keep from being bored—well, she's always _said _that, and even if she has yet to go to ridiculous or inhumane lengths to stave off boredom, Toya believes her; she seems just the type. _Unless she was pulling my leg again—but even then, Ikuko does get pretty frustrated when she hasn't got anything to do._

Anyway, we need to get back to the plot. That's what you're all here for, aren't you?

Ahem… Said plot finds Toya sitting at a small table in the library, with paper and pen and a general idea of a plot. He wants to write a mystery story, with a missing heiress, but without any death. Toya finds stories where people die rather depressing; needless to say, some of Ikuko's stories (okay, a _lot _of them), when half the cast don't survive the plot, or, in some of them, _no one_ survives the plot, depress the living daylights out of him. Toya desperately needs something a bit less… _weighty_. And yet, death seems to be such a staple of the mystery genre, at least from what he's read of the mystery genre.

So why not write something lighter himself?

_Okay, I've got a plot. Now I need a cast. I've got the heiress. I suppose the heiress needs parents; what's she supposed to be inheriting if she _doesn't _have parents? And they live way out in the country in this great, big, isolated house, and have called up the family lawyers and the other heirs as well—all the people who would benefit from the primary heiress suddenly disappearing—to discuss the contents of the will._

_Now, who do I want to be the culprit?_

Toya decides that determining who he wants to be the culprit can wait until later. For now, he gets down to working out the personalities and motivations of his cast. The short story will have eleven characters; that shouldn't be too difficult to manage. Toya gets down to work, feeling confident in himself.

-0-0-0-

Half an hour later, he's not feeling nearly so confident.

_This was a lot easier when I already had a cast to work with. _Toya runs his hand through his short-cropped hair and stares down in frustration at the piece of paper in front of him._ At least then I didn't have to worry about redundancy or all these stupid contradictions._

It was indeed far easier to write a story when there was already a cast created for him to play with. He didn't have to worry about getting people's personalities right for their station and circumstances, didn't have to worry about the redundancy, didn't have to worry about his characters seeming so… so… so flat.

That's just it. When Toya was working with Ikuko's characters, they seemed so lifelike to him. They were so fleshed-out and real in his mind, three-dimensional characters instead of the lifeless cut-outs he's seen so many authors resort to in the books he reads. They seemed like real people.

But when he tries to create characters of his own, they just… they just don't seem real. No matter how hard he tries, he can't make them seem any more three-dimensional than the piece of paper he's writing on. Toya just can't get past the fact that he _knows _these aren't real people, that he _knows _that they are in fact his creations; every word out of their mouths feels so forced, so contrived, so false. None of it seems natural, none of it.

_I'll just have to keep on. I'll just have to convince myself that they do seem natural, that they do seem real. That's the only way I can get past this, is if I convince myself that they're real, and that they're not just little cut-out figures running amok in my head._

_Just be confident_.

Toya picks up his pen again, and starts to write again.

-0-0-0-

A week later, he's finished it. And yes, Toya knows that that doesn't sound like a long time. But really, once he was able to get past his hang-ups about the characters he had created, it was easy to think out the plot in his head, and he was struck down hard with the feverish desire to put it down to paper. It was literally all he could do for days, writing, writing, writing some more, falling asleep at the table and, oh yes, more writing. Just in case you thought he was doing anything else.

All told, Toya's pretty proud of himself. He's completed his first written story (at least first written story written without _help_) ever, and frankly, he thinks it's pretty good for a first try. Maybe not a masterpiece, but still pretty good. _I guess hanging around Hachijo "Writing Nut" Ikuko has its benefits._

Now, however, Toya is struck with another urge.

He needs someone else to read it.

And naturally, there's only one person he's thinking of bringing it to.

"I've written something," he tells Ikuko simply, putting his paper clipped story down on her desk in front of her. "Do you want to read it?" What Toya doesn't add, but can probably be heard by her, even if he hasn't said it, are the remarks _"Please don't go too hard on me" _and _"For God's sake, Ikuko, please don't go picking apart the entire plot."_

Ikuko narrows her eyes and runs her fingernail across the papers to check how thick the story is. "Come back in an hour," she says absently, waving her hand, an odd glint in her eyes. "I should be done by then."

"You'll be done in an hour?"

"_Yes, _Toya. Give me some space."

-0-0-0-

An hour later, _exactly _an hour later, on the dot, Toya strolls back into Ikuko's study, trying his best to appear nonchalant about this, but in all fairness he knows that he can't possibly be faking nonchalance very well. This suspicion is borne out by the small smirk that flashes over Ikuko's lips when she sees him.

Ikuko lays the manuscript down on the desk and turns her chair towards him, leaning back and matching her fingertips, one to the other. She says nothing.

"Well?" Toya's voice is tense, and perhaps just a little rough. It's certainly not the voice of a collected person, and he knows it, and feels just a little disgusted with himself for it. All the same though… _I ought to be tense. _"What do you think?"

The authoress runs a hand through her hair, shrugs her shoulders languorously and sighs. "Well," she breathes, "well… It's your first try, isn't it?"

"Yeah…"

"Then, I _suppose _it's good…"

Toya glares at her. "Ikuko, I know you like stringing me along, but I'm not in the mood today. What do you think of my story?"

Ikuko abruptly drops her airy demeanor in favor of something much more businesslike. "As I said, it's good… for a first try." Her eyes are cool and her tone direct; she plucks up a pen and waves it at him. "But I wouldn't send it to a publishing house in a thousand years."

Well, that is certainly a needle to Toya's ego. "What?" he protests, staring at her—he knows he's not supposed to be surprised, but he still feels blindsided. "Why not?"

"You've broken half of Knox's rules and even more of Van Dine's. For God's sake, Toya, you didn't even kill anyone. You know killing someone builds up pathos, don't you? That it builds up tension?"

"You can have pathos and tension without killing off half your cast, Ikuko! Just because you love thinking up new ways to kill people doesn't mean I do!"

Ikuko smirks and waves her pen again. "Ah, but it's much more difficult, you understand. And your characterization… The conversations… Goodness, Toya, what were you thinking?"

"Okay, now you're just being rude."

"I mean it. Toya, the way your characters talk don't sound like anyone I've ever ran into. Listen, I know it's hard to write realistic conversations. Think about diction, and tone, and whether or not your characters would use slang, and if so, what slang they'd use. Think about that very hard; think about what sort of vocabulary befits their personality, education and social class. A housemaid with a junior high education isn't going to be dropping ten-letter words in every sentence, not unless she's trying to make herself sound smarter than she really is." Ikuko taps her lips with her pen. "Come to think of it," she mutters, "you could use that, make it clear that she doesn't know what she's talking about to illustrate that she's putting on airs." Her eyes clear. "Anyways, keep trying. Now shoo."

Still feeling just a little blindsided, Toya, recovering his manuscript, starts to stumble out of the study, only to be hit with a parting comment by Ikuko.

"Oh, and Toya?" He turns, sees her cat-smile, and cringes. "I could tell who your culprit was going to be from the moment he was introduced. It was _entirely too obvious_."

Toya slams the door behind him.

Some people have absolutely no heart.


	24. Beach Sand

_Beach Sand_

* * *

The sand spray comes up and hits his face, dragging across his winter-pale, no longer freckled skin, but Toya doesn't pay it much mind. In fact, the grit getting into his eyes, the brine spotting his trousers and the biting wind trying to stab him doesn't even wipe the smile off his face.

It's been raining all week, too dreary and stormy to go outside. The tide washed away untold amounts of sand and brought up seaweed, broken shells and miscellaneous debris; there's barely a clear patch of sand to be found. Ikuko was out here earlier, probably looking for dead bodies again; Toya imagines her inside, nursing a cup of coffee and staring out at the gray February. She had mentioned maybe going out into town today, to rent some movies; Toya hopes she remembers his request not to get any with "amnesia" subplots. It's still a bit of a tender spot for him.

February or not, gray and frigid or not, this is the first day all week that Toya's been able to venture outside without getting soaked and his bones turned to icy lead and his fingers colored blue. Even if he does have to wear a jacket with the collar turned up and his hands stuffed deep in his pockets, he intends to enjoy it.

_Now if only the sun would come out._

His enjoyment, spent picking his way through the flotsam and wondering if there's anything valuable hidden amongst the sand and surf, ends abruptly when a child's cry rises above the crashing waves.

Toya looks up, and feels a sudden hand reach in and squeeze his heart.

It's February. It's cold and windy, and the beach is covered in trash. This isn't exactly tourist season; there _shouldn't _have been any beachgoers out today, or for a long time after today.

The cries redouble, and are joined by voices. Toya stiffens as he spies figures emerging from the morning haze. Two children, and a few adults, all bundled in coats and hats and mittens. The children run out ahead of their chaperones, rooting about the driftwood in search of some small trinket or another, despite the injunctions of one of the women to stop.

Toya turns on his heel and starts back towards the house.

_My heart… Good God, my heart… _Their voices grate on his ears and the undeniable knowledge of foreign bodies nearing his own makes his heart pound so hard and his lungs strain so much that he can barely breathe.

A keen panic overwhelms him. _I have to get away. _

His pace quickens.

_I have to get back. I have to—Oh God._

By the time he's reached the safety of the porch, where Toya knows these strangers will never come, he realizes that he had broken into a dead run. His panting breath gives him away, along with his racing heart and aching feet. He stands there, face flushed, barely noticing the cold, until he can breathe normally again and his mind can register something other than _Please don't come up here._

When Toya finally regains full control over himself, he goes inside, each step mechanical and plastic. Pulling off his shoes and leaving his coat slung haphazardly over a chair (which earns him a disapproving look from Yoko, who immediately goes to fold the coat neatly and put it away in the coat closet), he goes and collapses on one of the couches. He pulls a blanket up over his long frame and gets swatted at by Bernkastel, who was napping very nicely, thank you very much, and would have preferred to not be disturbed.

"Oh, fuss at me," he murmurs to her, reaching over to scratch the cat's head. "We all know your bark's worse than your bite. When have you ever bitten anyone?"

For his troubles, he gets a deeply offended cat-look, and Bernkastel slinks away to go huddle at Ikuko's feet for warmth.

Alone again, the small smile fades from Toya's lips.

_What was that, anyways? I completely freaked out because a few people showed up on the beach. What's up with that?_

Though it was the sound of the kids running around and yelling that he was first aware of, Toya doesn't even think that was what threw him off. It wasn't the kids. It was the adults with them. No, it's more than that. It was the idea that he might have to talk to them. That was it. Being stared in the eye and spoken to, and having his skin peeled away so they could see what was lying underneath it. That was what prompted him to flee. That was what led him to retreat back to the safety and familiarity of the house.

_But why did I react like that? I've been around strangers before. Okay, I wasn't all that comfortable around them, but I didn't feel like I had to run away from them. I didn't completely lose my nerve around them like I did today._

Then, it hits him.

He was alone today.

He's never had to deal with strangers by himself before.

_Well… I'm pathetic_, he thinks to himself gloomily. All the same, he doesn't go back outside. He's not subjecting himself to that again.


	25. Euthymia

_Euthymia_

* * *

"Toya."

The one being called looks up from his reading, only to find Ikuko leaning down in front of him, her face uncomfortably close to his.

For himself, Toya jumps back, which he can't accomplish very well when sitting in one of the living room easy chairs as he is now. "Jeez, Ikuko!" he gasps, dropping his book in his lap and staring off to one side; out of the corner of his eye he catches Ikuko smirking an unusually… _buoyant _smirk. "What do you want?"

Ikuko straightens, adjusting the familiar white, broad-brimmed, dark purple-ribboned hat Toya's just now noticing she's wearing. Her smirk widens into a bigger version of her cat-smile. "I am going into town, to the bookstore. You're coming with me."

Given that Toya's heard absolutely nothing about this before now, and given that he does not _want _to go into town, he can't help but be a little skeptical about this. Or maybe hugely skeptical. Or maybe both. "Since when am I going to town with you?" he asks, raising an eyebrow. _You want me to go around in crowds with you. You want me to get in that death trap you call a car for anything other than "life or death" (or White Day) circumstances. Why, exactly, do you think this is going to happen?_

Probably worryingly, Ikuko's smile never so much as fluctuates. "Since right now, or since when you get properly dressed for the journey. Yes, I suspect that things like shoes, a jacket and maybe a hat would be essential for the journey."

Okay, she's being serious about this. Toya sighs and sets his book aside. "Ikuko, you know I hate the car."

"We won't use the car. We'll walk. It's a long walk, but I think we can make it."

"You know I hate crowds."

"You're expecting _crowds _in a secondhand bookstore?"

When Toya still looks unconvinced, Ikuko seems to decide to take a different approach. Her normally half-shut eyes open wide, like the shutter pulling back from a camera lens. "Just imagine, Toya. A shop full of books you've never read before, just waiting to be bought. It's your chance to broaden your horizons, to acquaint yourself with new worlds! Would you _really _pass that up? Would you _really _choose to stay here, in ignorance and doubt, when you could be out there, gaining knowledge about your world?"

Toya sighs again. If he stays home, Ikuko will never let him hear the end of it; she'll probably go so far as to not let him read the books she buys. And if Toya goes with her, as uncomfortable as it will be to have to deal with other people, at least he'll get some new books out of it. _And I probably need the exercise._

He smiles ruefully, waving a hand at her. "Yeah, yeah, I'll come. Since you asked so nicely."

If Ikuko caught the irony in Toya's voice, she ignores it quite thoroughly. She clasps her hands in front of her, beaming delightedly. "Wonderful! Go get your things!"

-0-0-0-

Mercifully, the weather has been warming up for a few weeks, though it's still what could best be defined as "brisk", especially when the wind blows; Ikuko's long hair whips back and forth beneath her hat and Toya adjusts his scarf, wincing and squinting away from the sun. The sky has cleared, from dull, murky gray to soaring azure blue; there's nary a cloud to be seen. _Now if the temperature would only go up about ten, fifteen degrees. At least it probably won't rain…_

"Some… walk," he gasps, huffing and puffing. They've been walking for a good half hour, the town is still nowhere in sight, and Toya is starting to get just a touch winded. _I guess this just goes to show how embarrassingly out of shape I am. Even Ikuko can keep a better pace than I can._

For once, Ikuko seems somewhat sympathetic to his plight. At the crest of a sandy hill topped with wiry, gray-green grass, she stops, and waits for him to catch up. "We can walk more slowly, I think," she says in response. Up close, Toya can sees that her normally porcelain-pale cheeks are flushed and red. "It's not like we're in any hurry."

So, to Toya's immense relief, their pace slows considerably after that, lagging off to a considerably, more leisurely walk. _Oh yeah, much better. At least I can catch my breath now._

Off to their left, the tide booms against the rocks. Toya looks down and is immediately greeted by a dizzying sight: the shore, some fifty feet below. He drags his eyes away and wastes no time in backing away from the cliff, heart pounding. _I had no idea that the drop was so sheer over here. Jeez, what a wake-up call._

Ikuko's eyes gleam. "Ah, I see you've noticed the cliff. You've never walked this far from the house, have you, Toya?"

"No, I haven't." All the time that he's lived here, his world has been confined to how far he's willing to walk—about fifteen minutes in any direction, in this case. He can't claim to have ever really _seen _this before.

She smiles, adjusting the broad brim of her hat. "Ooh, this place right here used to be infamous. People would fall off the edge of the cliff by mistake, or jump off to commit suicide. I think at least sixty people have died here."

Trust Ikuko to know something like that. Something piques Toya's interest, though. "What do you mean "used" to be infamous?"

"It's just not that popular a suicide spot anymore. I couldn't tell you why."

They continue on, occasionally digressing from their companionable silence to make comments about the weather, or the terrain, or the fact that the tourists have been coming to the beaches a bit earlier than usual this year. Ikuko finds out about Toya's discomfort around strangers when he's by himself and laughs, a shrewd gleam flickering in her eyes before vanishing. And did you know that this particular piece of land is also famous for being the site of several local ghost stories? Neither did Toya until Ikuko told him so, and he should think that the reasons for that are so obvious that Ikuko didn't _need _to tell him that it was because of the suicides.

Eventually, they surmount a dune-like hill only to find that what they look on is not more untamed, undeveloped land, but the expanse of the town that confidently calls itself the island's only major population center. Come to think of it, Toya's been hearing a guttural humming noise for some time which he now realizes belongs to the collective engine-noise of any number of cars cruising up the streets.

"Just follow me to the bookstore." Ikuko's eyes shine, but they take a moment away to adopt a playful gleam instead. "And Toya? I know you told me that you don't care for talking to strangers, but do try to make an effort today if you have to. I'd hate to have to roll you home if you chose to curl up into a ball like a hedgehog. My hands would be quite bloody by the end of it, and think of all the quills you would lose!"

Toya rolls his eyes. "Yeah, yeah, sure. Just point the way. I am, after all, completely at your mercy." Especially since he's completely forgotten where anything is since the last time he was here.

Striking forward straight ahead, Ikuko confidently walks down the main thoroughfare, walking a path she's clearly traversed a thousand times before. She comes to a halt in front of a shop with the sign "_Books For the Sun" _and a yellow sun painted on it, and motions for Toya to follow her inside. "This is the place. Come follow me."

Somewhat apprehensively, Toya does so.

The first thing that Toya notices about the shop is that no one appears to have dusted it since roughly the time when the first land-dwelling animals crawled out of the sea. The air is choked with dust; dust motes glitter like stars in the patches of sunlight cast by the windows. Toya can catch sight of whole galaxies of stars in a stray sunbeam.

The next thing he notices about the shop is that it's absolutely huge.

And by huge, we don't mean "average-sized corner bookstore stuffed from floor to ceiling with books" huge. We mean _huge, _huge. Like, "bigger than Ikuko's library by at least three times" huge. "Bigger on the inside" huge.

"Hello, Hachijo-san!" a cheery voice greets them. Ikuko and Toya both looks over in the direction of the cash register, though the latter soon realizes, abashed (and secretly relieved), that Ikuko was the one being addressed.

A young woman with curly brown hair sits behind the cash register, beaming at Ikuko. "Hello, Naomi-san," Ikuko greets her in return. Polite, Toya notices, but not with any special note in her voice that would intimate familiarity.

Maybe Naomi thinks differently about their relationship.

The moment the young cashier spots Toya and realizes that Ikuko isn't alone, her eyes light up. "Who's that, Hachijo-san?" She grins. "Do you have a boyfriend?"

_Wait, what? _If Toya was drinking something, this probably would have been the moment when he spat it out. He gapes, gob smacked, at the grinning cashier, who seems to care nothing for the fact that he might have just a fuse in his brain, and that it's _entirely her fault_.

Ikuko, also gob smacked (Toya might have wished for a camera had he not been too busy trying to digest that… _inquiry_), recovers first, frowning deeply. "A _friend_, you'll find," she responds firmly. Suddenly, Toya feels her ringed hand close around his wrist. "Come on, Toya," she mutters in his ear.

Once they're further back in the store (which, as Ikuko had implied it would be, is quite empty), and can be reasonably sure that they're out of earshot of the cashier, Toya asks, perhaps just a little touchily, "Friend of yours?" But then, shouldn't he be touchy?

"Acquaintance." Ikuko pinches the skin between her eyes. "Just your average over-familiar cashier. Nosing into people's personal lives and trying to bully them into buying more things than they want to seems to be part of the job description. Ignore her. Now go and look for some books."

The two part company, and Toya begins his search in earnest.

The books aren't in alphabetical order. Toya supposes he shouldn't expect them to be; in a shop this size with apparently only one employee that would be an absolute pain to maintain. However, he's gotten used to books being in an easy-to-access, alphabetical organization. Though Ikuko may be pretty lax on order in all other aspects of her life (or not concerned about order at all—the coffee table groaning under the weight of a legion of old newspapers and Ikuko's disordered study come to mind), Ikuko has always insisted on the books in the library being ordered alphabetically, by author. The one time Toya made the mistake of putting a book back in out of order, she had found it and gotten rather upset. In a typically Ikuko—tight-lipped smile and cutting comments—sort of way.

Soon, however, his lament over the tragic lack of alphabetization melts away.

Toya grins as he comes across title after title and author after author that he's never seen before. There are so many books that he's never heard of, and he wants to read them all. Knowing, though, that he won't be able to carry them all, Toya decides that he's going to have to limit himself. Unfortunately.

_I hate to admit it, but I'm glad Ikuko decided to drag me to town with her today. Even if the walk home is going to be murder._

Eventually settling on a few (just a few. Really!) books to take home and wholesale devour, Toya goes to find Ikuko.

When she sees him, she giggles.

"What?"

"Um, Toya? You are aware that we're walking home, right?"

"Yeah…"

"I think you need to put a few books back."

"What? Why? I've only got…" he pauses to count them "…twelve!"

"You know, the bookstore's not going anywhere."

"Yeah, but the books might."

"Oh, do as you like. But I'm not helping you carry them."


	26. repaying faith

_repaying faith_

* * *

Toya awakes one morning to find Ikuko tearing the house apart.

Well, maybe that's too strong a term. But only just. If you want to be totally, completely accurate, it's more like she's shifting furniture about and hanging precariously over the back, clearly looking for something. Toya can only assume she's lost a prized pen or something.

As Toya approaches Ikuko, who's in the process of breaking up housekeeping on the ground floor (Yoko will be _so _thrilled when she comes back on Monday), he hears her mutter "Where could she _be_?" Her voice has the sort of tense thrumming distinctly reminiscent of a soprano violin whose strings are in severe danger of snapping.

Unless Ikuko is in the habit of assigning her possessions gender pronouns (which Toya sincerely hopes she's not), Toya can only assume that she's not looking for something like a pen or a ring. Well, that narrows down the field a bit. Figuring that it's only a matter of time before she takes to trashing his bedroom, Toya decides that he'll bite and try to figure out what's going on.

"Erm… Ikuko?"

She huddles down on the floor and looks under one of the couches. "Yes, yes, what is it?"

"What… What are you doing?"

"I'm looking for Bernkastel," Ikuko explains distractedly.

Oh. Toya blinks. Well, he supposes that that explains why she's taking the living room apart—but really, does Ikuko _honestly _expect to find her cat in the space between the entertainment center and the wall? Oh… Okay, so maybe she does. Toya still thinks that that's a stupid place to look for a cat.

_Well, I guess _someone _needs to take a reasonable approach to this. _Toya stuffs his hands in his pockets and asks, brow furrowed, "Well, when'd you last see her?"

"The night before last," Ikuko frets, eyes darting about the room. Toya doesn't think he's ever seen her this overtly worried about anything or any_one_ before. "I haven't the slightest idea where she is."

Despite himself, despite knowing that Ikuko probably preys on sympathy the way a cat preys on hapless mice, Toya can't help but feel sorry for her now. Bernkastel was Ikuko's only real companion here for God knows how long, and people can get pretty weird about their pets. So he decides to help. (_The fact that is she _doesn't _find her cat he's still going to have to live with her in what would undoubtedly be a ruined shell of a home certainly helps._)

"Tell you what—I'll go look for Bern outside. She's more likely to be out there anyways." _Especially since the weather's been so nice lately._

Without looking at him, Ikuko waves a ring-encrusted hand. "Yes, thank you." She's still peering at the shadowy space between the T.V. and the wall. "And if you see her, bring her straight home."

"Will do."

-0-0-0-

Since Bernkastel rarely shows up on the porch dripping wet or covered in sand, Toya can only assume that she doesn't often wander the beach and thus he doesn't search there. There was from the searcher no comment as to whether the fact that the shore is currently packed with beachgoers influenced his decision-making in any way.

Thus, Toya finds himself venturing off in a direction _he _doesn't often wonder: towards the lonely, gray, sparsely tree-dotted expanse opposite the front of the house.

The way Toya figures, the situation with Bernkastel isn't nearly so dire as Ikuko makes it out to be. After all, Ikuko never comes down from that study of hers—Bernkastel could have simply come and gone when Ikuko was upstairs, and the pet-owner would be none the wiser. And the fact that Toya hasn't seen her doesn't mean much either; it's not like he goes actively looking for the cat for company.

No, Bernkastel's not in any danger. Probably Toya will find her lounging somewhere out in the sun, taking advantage of the fact that her solid black fur soaks up warmth so very efficiently. _Or maybe she's looking for another rabbit to traumatize me with._

So he wanders around the hills inland from his home, searching for a long-haired black cat. Well, Toya finds a pond he never knew was there, shaded by trees and bordered by bushes. He discovers fragrant honeysuckle trailing up an oak tree. Toya even scares a couple of deer, watching them bound away after being caught unawares. But no cat.

Determined not to be outdone by a cat, Toya continues to wander about the wilderness for what seems an eternity. Eventually, however, hunger forces him to seek out the road again, and he walks back to Ikuko's house, feeling disgruntled and rather abashed about the fact that he was outsmarted by a housecat.

_I wonder if Ikuko's even noticed how long I've—probably—been gone. Nah; she probably forgot about me the moment I stepped out the door._

Toya marches up the front walk towards the door, desperately wanting lunch. But then, he stops, frowning at a hydrangea bush that seems to be twitching towards the ground.

_Oh God, don't tell me…_

He approaches the bush.

_You've gotta be kidding me._

He bends down and peeks under the bush.

Blue eyes stare back at him.

"You rotten cat."

Predictably, Bernkastel makes no reply.


	27. Inane

_Inane_

* * *

Well-established on the couch, blankets draped over their shoulders and a huge popcorn bowl seated between them, all and sundry settle down to enjoy a rented movie. Even Bernkastel's here, curled on her mistress's lap like a pulsating black throw pillow with blue neon lights for eyes. Toya stuffs some popcorn in his mouth. Ikuko does so as well ('daintily' and 'with an air of regal grace' she would probably put it, if you can cram eight pieces of popcorn in your mouth at once daintily), and, taking up the remote, wielding it as a medieval knight would brandish a sword in the defense of some fair maiden, presses play.

It's hopefully going to prove to be a good night.

Toya's lip twitches in the suggestion of a knowing smile as the previews play (Ikuko always insists on letting the previews run uninterrupted, says it makes this feel more like an authentic theater experience; Toya's just going to have to take her word for it). Ikuko's assured him that the movie—amnesia-free; he has her solemn word—will be worth sitting through for ninety minutes. However, even if it wasn't, his main source of entertainment will be coming from the couch cushion next to him.

As all the world knows, Ikuko can be pretty unkind in the face of imperfection. She picks and picks and picks, seizing viciously on a less than sound plot point and unravels it until it's completely fallen apart. She can make a seemingly solid movie look more like a shoddily constructed piece of Swiss cheese before she's done with it.

Of course, sometimes Toya finds her ripping into the movies he's trying to watch rather annoying. If he's really, truly enjoying the movie, then he doesn't want her interrupting. But usually, Ikuko doesn't rent movies beyond reproach. Usually, Ikuko picks out movies that, while watchable (if only just barely sometimes), have some pretty stupid subplots. Stupid enough that picking them apart tends to end up being more enjoyable than watching the movie itself.

_You definitely need popcorn on a night like this._

Eventually, after about twenty minutes (_Is this how long they run in movie theaters?_), the last of the previews blinks out of existences and is replaced a broad, sweeping score that can't possibly be anything but the movies opening theme. Toya takes note of the soft colors on the screen, and frowns. He takes not of the opening score, which eventually shrinks to a gentle, delicate duet of violins and high-pitched flutes, and frowns even more. "Ikuko, this isn't a romance movie, is it?"

Tearing her somewhat-abstracted gaze away from the screen, Ikuko smiles the smile of someone who already knows what's coming and isn't going to spare him the suspense. "Oh, it's a romance alright. It's _appallingly _romantic. But that's not what most people remember it for."

"what do they remember it for, then?"

"For being unintentionally hilarious. Now hush; I don't want to give anything else away."

Toya turns his attention back to the movie, supporting his head with one hand and absently popping popcorn into his mouth with the other.

After the movie finishes panning over a densely forested landscape juxtaposed with a bustling metropolis a helpful subtitle identifies as Toronto, Toya finds himself met with a woman walking down a hall. Her thoughts are providing narration. Though she's apparently working in a cubicle for some big-time corporation, she's not thinking about her job, or any big project she's got due, or how the coffee maker's stopped working again, or anything like that. No, she's complaining about how unattractive she is. What a promising start.

_Huh? _Personally, Toya doesn't get it. This woman is tall and leggy. She has perfect skin with an even complexion, no freckles, and no scars of any kind. Her eyes are blue and wide, her lips full, and her hair a lush, golden blonde. And she's certainly not dressed like she's insecure about her appearance. The only thing you could possibly find fault with is her hairstyle—bouffant, and quite poofy—but Toya's pretty sure people find that fashionable anyways. And isn't blonde, blue-eyed and busty supposed to be the ideal in the West?

The protagonist complains about how she'll never be loved, and meanwhile about a dozen pairs of eyes are inexorably drawn to her heaving-with-every-breath bosom. Toya begins to suspect that she wore that shirt on purpose.

"Really reaching, isn't she?" Ikuko murmurs. Toya can only nod.

It keeps on going. Despite Blondie's supposed hideousness, she soon gets entangled in a love pentagon with her at the center, three men pining over her and the frustrated fiancée of one of the men, whom we shall call Brunette, trying to keep Blondie away from her man.

Blondie makes a show of being attracted to all three men. However, it quickly becomes clear that she's zeroing in on the man who's already in a relationship, who we shall call Generic Guy. There's no better name for him—he has no personality to speak of, but is apparently a pretty unpleasant person if he's willing to cheat on Brunette, who is easily the most sympathetic character in the movie despite said movie doing everything it can to frame her as a jealous, shrewish harpy. The other two men are unceremoniously dropped from the movie, and are never seen, heard from or mentioned again.

"Of the three guys that were all swooning over this woman, she just has to go for the one who already had a girlfriend?"

Ikuko giggles. "Like I said, hilarious. And it doesn't matter, since the movie is obviously is trying to make us believe the fiancée is evil and that the "protagonist" is doing this guy a favor by getting him to break it off with her."

Toya nods, brow furrowed. "Okay, yeah, I can see that. But what exactly is _supposed _to make that woman evil?"

"Oh, silly. Isn't it obvious?"

"No, it's really not."

She makes a humming noise in her throat, running a hand through her hair. "Well, the fiancée is everything that the protagonist, who is apparently supposed to be heroic or something, is not. She's a brunette, when _everyone_ knows that only blondes can be good in movies. The fiancée wears pant suits and is a hard worker, whereas the protagonist wears "sexually liberating"—" Toya snorts "—dresses and is too good for her work, so she doesn't do it. And to top it all off, the fiancée actually has to _gall _to demand that her betrothed work for a living. The protagonist wouldn't force him to do that! Pure evil!"

Toya laughs softly. "Yeah, pure evil."

"Now what _I _can't understand is what these women are supposed to see in this man."

_Really? Even I can understand that, on some level. I suppose he's good looking… I guess…_

Not long after they start watching again, Blondie spouts off the most, erm, _memorable _line of the movie thus far.

"_Oh, my darling, we were meant for each other. The stars ordained our meeting!"_

Toya feels as though the sheer stupidity of this movie's dialogue's about to give him food poisoning—_Seriously, what's the likelihood of this… this… _woman _knowing what the word "ordained" means? Did she even use it the right way? _At the same time, Ikuko lets out a scream of laughter so piercing that Bernkastel, previously enshrouded in a dead sleep, wakes with a start, glares up at Ikuko resentfully, and slinks off of her lap to find some peace in the anonymity of the shadows beyond the glow of the television screen.

The movie's climax (if something that is in possession of a train wreck rather than a plot can really be said to have a climax) comes down to Blondie and Brunette having a verbal fencing match (again, if you can call Blondie spewing obscenities 'fencing') over Generic Guy. Brunette brings up a lot of good points that are ignored and shot down with abusive language and swearing. Eventually, Blondie lets out a particularly below-the-belt comment that earns her ea well-warranted slap on the face from Brunette. Blondie lets out an eldritch screech and staggers back as if mortally wounded.

And that's when Generic Guy chooses to step out from behind a door, revealing that he'd been watching the whole thing.

This is the moment when Toya hopes that Generic Guy will see Blondie for the soul-sucking demon that she is. He hopes with all his heart and soul that Generic Guy will redeem himself in the eyes of the audience and start treating his fiancée better.

"_She was right! You're just a crazy bitch!"_

Toya can only watch, agape, as Generic Guy seizes Brunette's wrist and starts ripping into her, using the sort of language that would have made a sailor blush. She tries to defend herself, and that's when he punches her in the face, sending her flying to the floor. Blondie and Generic Guy walk off hand in hand, and Brunette is left sprawled on the ground, sobbing her eyes out.

And as the two "lovebirds" drive off in Generic Guy's red convertible, the happy music in the background is clearly meant to show us that this is a happy ending.

The credits roll, and for a few moments, all Toya can do is stare, speechless, at the screen. Ikuko tilts her head as she looks over him, smiling almost sympathetically at his speechlessness. "Well I suppose you're not the _first _person to ever have that reaction," she observes whimsically, adjusting the afghan draped about her shoulders with a few languorous shrugs.

Finally, after a few more catatonic seconds, Toya finds that his tongue works properly again. And he chooses to say the only thing that could possibly make sense under such circumstances. "What… what just happened?" he chokes out, suddenly struck the urge to take the videotape and smash it to pieces with a baseball bat.

"I get _that _a lot too."

"What just happened?!" Toya exclaims. "Where did that come from?! She _won_? That horrible woman _won_? And those two just drove off into the sunset, or something? What?"

Ikuko chuckles, and switches the television back to the news. "You know, the part where the protagonist weaseled her love interest away from his fiancée was actually the moment when I respected her the most in this movie."

Toya stares at her, aghast. "_What?!_"

"She showed herself to be possessed of some intelligence—after all, she'd told her love interest in a previous scene to stand there, and did you see that smirk she sent the ex-fiancée's way as they left? She knew what she was doing. She is possessed of some cunning, if only in the manner of a manipulator. So…" Her left lip quirks upwards in a sardonic half-smile. "…Am I to take it that you didn't like it?"

"I _hated _it!"

Ikuko laughs, a full, cackling laugh—a witch's laugh. She starts flipping through the channels, and gobbles up the last of the popcorn—the bits most-saturated with butter and salt. Toya, scowling, wishes they'd watched another movie.

Maybe one about vampires.


	28. Forgeries

_Forgeries_

* * *

Ikuko first learns of it from one of journals she subscribes to. Reading her journals over breakfast has always been a favorite discussion of Ikuko's, but today the mail was running a bit late, so she's reading them over lunch in her study instead. It's probably just as well. It wouldn't do for Toya to see the grin that unfurls over her face at the sight of one of the teasers on the glossy cover.

'_It is believed that an account of the massacre on Rokkenjima may have been discovered.'_

Oh, it's almost certainly the turn of the rumor mill, and it certainly won't help her in her observations of Toya, waiting and watching to see if he ever regains his memories. Showing it to Toya probably wouldn't help either; he'd just look at her and ask why he was being shown a glorified tabloid.

_I don't see why there's anything wrong with reading tabloids. I understand that most of it is nothing but lies and I find them just hilarious, so why do I keep getting those odd looks every time I go into town to pick some up?_

Back on topic, Ikuko starts scanning the table of contents, trying to find the article she's looking for. Page 79 holds the key, it seems. Ikuko's eyebrows shoot up as she starts to read the article, and realizes that it's not quite what she expected.

According to the article, there has recently been found a bottle washed up on a nearby shore. Within the bottle, which had been sealed shut with a cork and wax, there was what appears to have been an account of the massacre on Rokkenjima and the events leading up to it. The account was signed by Ushiromiya Maria, one of the tragedy's many victims. Also found in the bottle was a bleached, naked human lower jawbone. It was small enough that it probably belonged to a child.

By now entranced, Ikuko keeps reading. The author of the article notes that "Maria's" account records a fantastical tale involving witches and demons. There are, however, "_some problems with it."_

"_Ushiromiya Maria's tale tells of things she could not possible have known. In this narrative, she recounts incidents that she was not present for, and which the witnesses could not have told her, for none of them survived the incidents which she described. There is also the matter that the hand-written account used handwriting and diction far superior to that which can be realistically attributed to such a young girl…"_

Basically, the gist is that the validity of this so-called "message in a bottle" is dubious at best. Ikuko couldn't agree less.

_Oh, silly woman. Don't you know that when truth is locked away inside of a cat box, any speculation is valid? You know, they could use something ludicrous like "small bombs" to explain this tragedy, and it would be just as valid as any of your own hypotheses._

Ikuko wonders how many others have seen this article. _This is a fairly popular journal. Speculation must be running mad, _she muses. Then, she smiles, a wide, tolerant, beneficent smile. _How magnificent. I can imagine that that has re-sparked interest in the massacre. _When people speculate, they come up with such wild and wildly entertaining theories. Even if they're completely off-base, it's still so much fun to read the ridiculously creative explanations people can come up with. It's almost enough to make Ikuko want to rejoin the human race.

_Oh, Child of Man, thank you, _she addresses the author of this tale. _Even if this is just a forgery and something you're doing as a prank, you've made the world an infinitely more interesting place than it was before._

All this gives Ikuko an idea, and makes her smile again, but this smile is not nearly as benevolent. Though she's been exiled to the very ends of earth and it would probably be too much to hope for to obtain the original manuscript, she is not entirely without resources. It wouldn't be that hard to get a copy of this tale.

_I think I have a new hobby._


	29. not a part of my agenda

_not a part of my agenda_

* * *

Ikuko sighs as she comes out of the gas station convenience store, having paid her dues and being more than ready to head back home. Money is no object, but paying for mundane things like gas for her car is such a pain sometimes. The _ordeal _of waiting in line, behind other people, certainly isn't helping her feel of the experience.

Oh well. At least there were plenty of tabloids in the gas station for her to buy, even if she did have to endure all those scathing, superior, _"Good God, that girl is so trashy; do you _see _what she's buying?_" looks she got from the other women in the store. But since Ikuko doesn't give a damn what the peasant-folk think of her, she can waltz back to her car, magazines in her arms and coat wrapped close about her without even a hint of self-consciousness. These people don't know her. She'll likely never lay eyes on them again. She couldn't care less if they think of her as "trashy."

Revving up the car and turning on the heater, Ikuko readies herself to go home. She's not sure how, but somehow Toya managed to talk her into picking up some pastries from the local bakery without having to go there himself, and she really needs to get home before something happens to them. But as she's dumping her magazines into the passenger's seat, one of the headlines on the top tabloid catches her eye.

Just as she saw on the journal that had come to her in the summer, there is a blurb on the poor-paper cover about the Ushiromiya family. _'Trouble with the Ushiromiya?' _Below that blurb is a picture of a middle-aged woman and a little girl. Judging from the looks of anger on their faces and the presence of people around them, shocked and scandalized, it appears that they're having a fight in a public place. Frowning, Ikuko makes a note of the page and thumbs through the tabloid until she finds the article itself.

Oh, it's just what she'd expected from a tabloid. It's sensationalist and exaggerating everything, and the only thing you can really rely on is the pictures, but you can still cut through all the lies and exaggerations if you want, and figure out a little bit of what's really going on. That she does, in an instant.

Apparently, the two remaining Ushiromiya family members whose survival is actually known to the world aren't getting along particularly well. Ushiromiya Eva, second daughter of Kinzo, and Ushiromiya Ange, her niece (_Toya's sister_, Ikuko thinks to herself), are butting heads. Evidently Ange hasn't accepted her as a surrogate parent, and Eva's responded to this in the worst way possible, by lashing out at her niece verbally and even physically.

Meanwhile, Eva's been dubbed _"The Queen of Suspicion_" by the press, a dubious moniker that seems not to have escaped the attention of her niece, if the quote _"Give me back my parents! Give me back my big brother!" _is anything to go on. She's not reacting well to the pressure and has been behaving increasingly erratically in public. Needless to say, the aforementioned press has seized on this as absolute proof that she is behind the massacre on Rokkenjima after all.

Rumor and suspicion follow Ushiromiya Eva wherever she goes. And Eva… Eva has reacted to this about as well as could be expected. Which is to say, badly.

Ikuko sighs, and leans back in her seat, setting the tabloid down and remembering.

She'd managed to get her hands on a copy of "Maria's" manuscript about a month ago. It had indeed proved to be fascinating reading, but as the source she had first learned of it had noted, it was entirely too eloquent to be the work of a nine-year-old girl. All the same, she'd been absolutely fascinated by it, to the point that Ikuko's started stretching out her hand to get her hands on any documents remotely connected to Rokkenjima and the Ushiromiya—interviews, testimonials, birth records, et cetera.

But that's not really what's of importance in this moment. No, what's important is that article, and what exactly it means for her, and Toya.

It ought not to concern her (_And it doesn't, she tells herself_). She's never met either of those people, never met Ushiromiya Eva or her orphaned niece. What does it matter to her if the relationship between two women who have only each other is falling apart? She couldn't care less about a possible-murderer abusing her niece or a girl antagonizing her mourning aunt. All this she tells herself with a decisive nod of her chin and a faint "hmph" directed at anyone who would presume to deem her horrible.

_But how would Toya react if he knew the truth? Would he stay here? Or would he go to them, and drop me like yesterday's old garbage?_

Ikuko's known Toya for what feels like an eternity. She no longer thinks of him as Battler, not consciously nor even subconsciously. He's not Ushiromiya Battler anymore to her; that's part of what he is, but to her it's simply an identity he used to have, doesn't know about anymore, and can no longer claim to have. She thinks of him as Hachijo Toya now, her friend and companion, the man who may as well have always lived with her. She's jealous of his company as she always was with the few friends she had growing up. She doesn't like the thought of sharing him with the now-murky but never gone entity that is his old, forgotten life.

And for all that Ikuko knows Toya, she can't claim to know what he would do if he were to regain the memories of his old life and remember that he has family who are hurting, in pain, and could be helped by his presence. It's an uncertainty and it bothers her, the way all the things in the world that Ikuko doesn't know bothers her. She doesn't like to not know everything. Knowledge is safe; with knowledge she can at least have some idea of the future and plan for it, trying her best to make it go her way. If she doesn't know how someone's going to behave, she can't plan ahead.

He could stay, even after discovering that he's Ushiromiya Battler. Toya might decide that he doesn't care enough anymore to return to the life that used to be his. Or he could leave, and go back to his family, and leave Ikuko without a second glance. Or he could stay, but decide that he hates her.

He could decide that he hates her for not telling him sooner, and that it was she who let this, the darling of the tabloids, come to pass.

_I don't know what I'm so worried about, _she thinks to herself suddenly, shaking her head. _This, all of this that's going on between those two in the article, it's got nothing to do with me. It's not my fault. I did nothing to either of them. And what difference would it make, if Toya was with them? They'd likely still not get along, not at all._

_I've never met these people. They've likely never heard of me. What happens to them has nothing to do with me or Toya._

Ikuko puts the car into reverse and backs out of her parking spot, having eyes only for the road home. There at least, she can escape the outside world with all its uncertainties.

At home, she knows everything, so she can prepare for everything.

And not hear her mind telling her that maybe she should feel guilty.


	30. Glimpses of Happiness

Sorry about the wait._  
_

* * *

_Glimpses of Happiness_

* * *

"Ikuko, why are we going down to the beach? It's cold and windy and dark out and we're going to get covered in sand. You _hate _being covered in sand. You never come out here when it's windy. And why are we bringing these chairs, and the wine, and the blankets?"

"Oh, silly, isn't it obvious?"

"…Ikuko, since when do we celebrate New Year's Eve outside?"

Ikuko just shakes her head and motions to a large dune gleaming ghostly white in the moonlight. "Oh, hush. Don't you want to live a little, every once in a while? Don't you want to see something up close, and not just over the television screen?"

"Shouldn't _I _be the one asking _you _that question?"

She smirks. "Not tonight, evidently. Put the chairs down on that dune over there; that's where we'll get the best view of the moon." Ikuko catches Toya smiling ever so slightly as he sets the lawn chairs down, despite his complaints, and she puts a hand on her hip. "Oh, are you perhaps not as averse to this as you had intimated, Toya?"

"You're getting soft, Ikuko. A year ago you would have found a way to cut my pride into ribbons with just those words." He sinks into one of the lawn chairs, pulling a blanket up around his shoulders and cringing at the blustery wind. "Now you can't even put a dent in my ego."

"Maybe I'm just not trying tonight." _Or maybe I really am going soft, horror of horrors. But if that's the case, I never imagined that you would complain about it, Toya. _Ikuko takes her seat with all the grace of some regal lady convinced that she has the attention of a rapt and adoring audience. She produces a bottle of wine from her basket, and takes a light gulp. "I'm afraid it's drinking straight from the bottle tonight, however uncouth that may be. I didn't want to risk the wine glasses."

Toya shrugs unconcernedly, accepting the bottle when Ikuko holds it out for him to take. "Adds to the mood, I guess." And, unconcerned about politeness or the fact that his have not been the first lips to meet the mouth of the bottle, he takes a much deeper gulp, and sets the bottle back down in its wicker nest. They fall to silence.

The cold cutting little lines in her flesh that Ikuko _swears _would be visible if she just had a different set of eyes, she adjusts her soft purple shawl to cover her shoulders a touch more snugly. This winter's been milder than the last, but still, when that wind picks up it feels like the air's made of little serrated knives instead of, well, _air_. Ikuko can only take so much cold before she decides she needs some extra protection—and some alcohol to warm her veins. Toya seems to feel the same way, if his hidden hands and chapped cheeks are any indication.

_It's funny. I've never particularly wanted to celebrate New Year's Eve from outside before. If I'm honest, I've never been all that enthusiastic about end-of-the-year rituals at all. I don't eat soba or give gifts. I don't visit shrines. I don't write cards. I don't even make rice cakes. I just like to watch all the silly television programs that come on tonight, and even so, I prefer to do that inside. Inside I can have plum tea and warm cake. Inside, I don't feel like my toes are going to fall off, even when they're encased in leather and wool._

_And yet here I find myself, out in the wretched December cold, looking at a crescent moon and waiting for midnight's dawning. Wait, have I got my watch? Ah yes, I do._

_What, pray tell, am I doing out here?_

Unable to discern any ulterior motive or deep psychological yearning captured in the thinking part of her brain, Ikuko decides that the answer to her question is the most obvious one. She is out here to watch a new year rear it's ugly head. She's out here to drink wine and be cold, and hold in her wind-chapped hands the companionship of one of the only friends she has ever had. Sometimes, simple answers are far more satisfying than convoluted twist-turn explanations.

She's doing this because she can, and because occasionally Ikuko has to seek out new things when she feels like her life's growing stale and dry. And she wants to share that new experience with another person, and doesn't know why.

_Oh well. I'll figure it out in the morning. Or maybe not. Or maybe I just don't care._

Lights glitter in the distance, hazy and flickering, a lovely mirage centered on the sand of the beaches instead of the dunes of the deserts. A few wisps of cloud pass over the moon and Ikuko takes a draught from the wine bottle. It's nearly half-empty now, gleaming wet and sticky at its lip. For a moment she's tempted to drain the whole thing and feel fire roaming through her veins, but the specter of a splitting headache come morning stops her. Half-regretfully, Ikuko returns the long-necked bottle to its resting place.

Beside her, Toya has his nose down-turned into his scar and shirt collar. His shock of white hair looks like a patch of snow bobbing in the darkness. His eyes are half-shut and he doesn't notice her staring at him.

Eventually, Ikuko risks exposing her hand to the cold and the grains of sand being blown about by the wind. 12:07. Seven minutes into a brand new year, she glances over at her companion. "It's past midnight, Toya."

"Great." His voice is muffled and his eyes watering. "Happy New Year, Ikuko." His hand shoots out and he grabs the wine bottle. Toya takes a huge swallow of the rich maroon liquid and gasps, tears spilling down his face in earnest. The veins in his cheeks flutter a bit.

Ikuko decides that maybe a modicum of mercy is needed. It wouldn't do to keep him out here until his blood froze; if that happened, who would she have to _play with_? "Let's go inside now."

She doesn't laugh at Toya's outrageous eagerness to pack up the lawn chairs. But Ikuko surprises herself by wanting to.


	31. Deafening Silence

_Deafening Silence_

* * *

One afternoon in early May, something happens that Toya doesn't think has ever happened before, or at least not in a very long time. The front doorbell rings, a high chiming sound that rings out through the house. At first, he doesn't connect the sound he hears with the doorbell; it's been such a non-entity in his life that he's not learned to recognize it. But Toya's watched enough television where doorbells are rung that he soon realizes what that sound means.

Out of sheer curiosity, not really thinking about the consequences of meeting someone, alone, face to face, Toya heads towards the door, intent on opening it. _I don't think Ikuko's ever had a visitor here before, unless you count deliverymen. I wonder who it is…_

But before he can cross the living room floor, Ikuko's come down the stairs, frowning slightly. One look at her face tells Toya that she wasn't expecting any visitors today; the way her brow furrows beneath her short fringe says that much. She crosses the living room floor, smoothing down her hair absently, before stopping in front of the door.

Toya is in a position to see the right side of her face as she opens the door. Therefore, he can see Ikuko's eyes widen when she sees who's standing outside the door, and can see that whatever emotion is making them widen, it's not pleasure. And she doesn't summon up that inscrutable cat-smile of hers either. Instead, she stands aside, still wearing that slightly frowning, definitely not pleased look on her face, as a woman steps inside, placing her broad-brimmed maroon sunhat on the nearby coat rack and surveying her surroundings with an air of aristocratic disdain.

"It's… _interesting_, what you've done with the place, Ikuko."

Ikuko's lips tighten, and now_, now_, she plasters that thin smile onto her face. "Well, if I'm supposed to live here, I may as well select décor that meets with my approval, shouldn't I, Mother?"

_Mother?! _In this moment, Toya's confused about a lot of things. First, Ikuko changed the furniture, or something? Frankly, the furniture, lamps, carpeting and ornaments of the living room have to him always looked like they've been here since time immemorial; he can't imagine that there ever used to be something different in their place. Sure, he'd had his doubts at first, but really… And second, Mother?!

Okay, realistically, Toya's always known that Ikuko didn't just spring up from the ground, adult, fully-formed and parentless, like someone had planted a seed there and watered it. She had to come from somewhere, had to have a family somewhere. But he never really thought about it at all before now. _Guess I may as well have been thinking she came from a flower seed. Then again, _I _may as well have come from a flower seed_, Toya thinks with a rueful smile_. I suppose I just wanted someone to share the experience with_.

"And who are you?"

Toya nearly jumps as Ikuko's mother directs her gaze at him. He meets her gaze, paralyzed and unable what to say in response, as she looks him up and down, lips pursed. _Oh, great. What do I say? What do I say?_

Fortunately, Ikuko seems to sense Toya's sudden "deer in the headlights" reaction, and chooses to make the introductions for him. "Toya, this is my mother, Hachijo Kotone. Mother, this is Toya."

Kotone raises an eyebrow. "Boyfriend?"

_Oh, not that again._

Ikuko's smile grows longer, thinner and more catlike all at once. "A _friend_, Mother. Why don't we go sit down?" She nods towards the sitting room off to the side.

Bernkastel is dislodged from her spot on one of the chairs in the sitting room, lounging in a sunbeam; Ikuko heads in the direction of the kitchen. There are a few moments in which Toya is left alone with their houseguest, who judging by the way her eyes swivel about the room and grow more glassy with every second, has both completely forgotten he's there, and isn't judging the furnishings of the sitting room much more positively than she did the living room. Thankfully, those moments are short indeed, when Ikuko re-emerges from the kitchen with three glasses of ice water, setting them down on the coasters on the table.

Kotone frowns as she watches her daughter put down the glasses and slide into her own seat. "Where are your servants?" she asks her.

"It's Golden Week, Mother," Ikuko replies, taking a sip from her glass. "I gave them the week off. And do _you _call someone down to get you a glass of water?"

Kotone doesn't answer that question. Instead, she too takes a sip of water from her glass, silent. In fact, she shows no sign of saying anything at all. To Toya, it's obvious who she's waiting on to speak first.

As the seconds while by in silence, Toya's gaze passes from Ikuko to Kotone. Ikuko bears a considerable resemblance to her mother. They have the same purplish-black hair, the same flexible mouths, the same long neck and the same ageless look about them, looking neither particularly youthful nor particularly aged. The difference shows primarily in Kotone's brown eyes and hook-shaped nose, and in the perpetually prim look on Kotone's face. Ikuko only looks like that about half of the time.

And something else occurs to him as well.

In all the time he's been here, this is the first time he's ever seen Ikuko's mother—well, to be honest, this is the first time he's ever seen a member of her family, _period. _Unless he's mistaken, neither her mother nor anyone else in her family have ever called the house. Unless he's mistaken, none of them have ever written letters to her. The same goes for the reverse as well. Not one member of Ikuko's family has contacted her in all this time. And she hasn't contacted them, either.

Toya understands that Ikuko values her privacy, values solitude—that's probably why it's as easy for him to live with her as it is. But he still wonders if maybe there's something wrong with the levels it's been taken to, by her and by her family. If she has any family, apart from this woman here.

Eventually, Ikuko seems to feel as though forced to break the silence her mother cast. "So, Mother…" The forced cheer in her voice is grating. "…May I ask to what I owe the pleasure of your visit?"

Kotone runs her finger over the rim of her glass, staring down into the water. "Do I need any reason to visit my only daughter?" she asks calmly.

Recognizing that he's been quite thoroughly forgotten, Toya leans back in his chair and takes a long draught out of his own cup. _Maybe she might consider it surprising since you've not visited her in years, at the very least, _he supplies silently, deciding it better not to put that opinion of his into words; Hachijo Kotone does not strike him as a woman to be trifled with. Better just to sit and watch.

The two women continue to exchange cool, strained pleasantries, and Toya continues to drink his water and keep well within the relative comfort of his cloak of anonymity. The atmosphere of the room grows tenser with every passing second, Ikuko's voice growing ever more saccharine and Kotone's mouth ever more prim. _I wonder how long it'll be before something spontaneously combusts._

In a moment, he nearly gets his wish.

Kotone at last comes to some topic of small talk that seems to leave her somewhat less than unflustered. She sets down her glass, lacing her fingers in her lap. Her gaze settles more on her daughter's lips than on her eyes as she says, "Ikuko, when we sent you here—"

'_Sent you here'? _Toya has but a moment to wonder at her words and at exactly what is going on here. Before Kotone can be allowed to finish her sentence, Ikuko cuts her off. "Well, Mother, it's been pleasant to see you." Her eyes flash dangerously, and her voice couldn't be any sweeter if it was laden in undiluted sugar. "But you've a long trip home, I know, so I won't detain you any longer."

At least Kotone has the grace to look a little unsettled as she nods, smoothing down her skirt and standing. "Ah, yes." Ikuko springs to her feet after her, smiling thinly as she ushers her mother back towards the front door. Toya follows a little ways behind, brow furrowed, still feeling extremely uncomfortable about this whole thing. Kotone plucks her hat off of the hat stand. Without another word, she steps out of the door and is gone.

-0-0-0-

_Well, that was unpleasant._

That is Ikuko's thought as she rinses out the three glasses she'd pulled out at random from a cabinet. They're not even the right glasses for water, she realizes. _These aren't water glasses; they're snifters. Ah, well; it's not as if Mother doesn't already think me completely devoid of decorum. It's doubtless not to have lowered me in her esteem at all._

Normally, she wouldn't be rinsing out these cups herself. Yoko or Harumi would be handling it. However, it really _is _Golden Week, and everyone deserves time off once in a while, so it's not like either one of them are anywhere nearby. In their absence, under any other circumstances, she might conscript Toya into cleaning the glasses for her, and just go back to her study and write. But this afternoon, she needs some menial task, not overwhelming, but just attention-consuming enough to keep her mind occupied.

It's been years since she's seen any member of her family, or even heard from them. The closest she gets to contact with her parents is when a certain sum of money is deposited into her bank account—enough to pay the servants, pay for other expenses and to keep her in comfort, but not as much as she used to be accustomed to. It happens on the first of every month, like clockwork, but is no substitute for human contact.

All told, though, Ikuko supposes she probably prefers the transference of her monthly allowance into her bank account, over human contact. Disapproval is so rankling, after all. And it's not like any of them will ever see a difference in her behavior, between now and the escalating incidents that led to her living here in the first place. _No one in my family ever forgets. We're all known for our unimpeachable memories. No one forgets a misspent youth._

"Hey, Ikuko."

Ikuko doesn't look up as Toya's voice sounds from somewhere behind her. She can imagine the look of perplexed curiosity on his face as he's met with her back. For once, instead of being struck with the urge to smile and tease at his curiosity, she's irritated by it. She doesn't answer him.

"Your mother said something about you being 'sent' here. What did she mean by that?"

Ikuko pauses dead in her tracks, stopping her vigorous scrubbing. The silence gaping between his words and hers is suddenly all but deafening.

She remembers the old frustration, the old disquiet and restlessness, the old annoyance at being so consistently ignored. She remembers the way her grades dropped her senior year of high school, the nights and evenings that were spent wandering the streets aimlessly when they would have been better spent studying—and oh, the things she had seen! She remembers the anger that she was _still _being ignored. And then, Ikuko remembers the Incident.

The Incident is probably better left un-described. If it was elaborated on it would be sure to serve no purpose but to scandalize all and sundry. Suffice to say that it was big, bold and impossible to ignore, a work of art, some might say. Those less inclined to think kindly of it remember the property damage and the lawbreaking, remember that only by the grace of God and the fabulous wealth and influence of the Hachijo family was Ikuko able to avoid gaining for herself a criminal record.

After that, she was given two choices.

A: Be disowned, and have your name cut out of the will of every member of this family still living.

B: Go to your grandparents' old summer home, where you shall live _quietly _and _respectably_, and unless we call you back, never return to this city or show your face to us again.

"_You are an embarrassment to our family. Be glad that we give you this chance to redeem yourself."_

Ikuko was not, and still isn't, prepared to make her way in the world, prepared to have to work for a living or interact with large numbers of people on a daily basis. Even as a young girl, she understood that, and so did her parents. Obviously, she went with the second choice.

It occurs to her that Toya's still waiting for an answer, and that the longer she waits to give him one the more curious—and suspicious—he'll become. She turns to face him, and smiles, thin and cat-like. "Nothing important," she tells him lightly, endeavoring to expel any curiosity from him.

Mercifully, Toya lets it lie, even if he still looks less than certain.

It really isn't important anymore, after all. It's just ancient history. They're done with her, and she's done with them.

* * *

1: Golden Week is a Japanese holiday in which many people don't have to go into work. It occurs on April 29 and May 2-5, but oftentimes people just take the whole week off. I needed a reason for Ikuko to be washing those dishes herself.

And as for Kotone and the rest of Ikuko's family, I don't think we'll be seeing any more of them again. Now that they know that Ikuko isn't dead and hasn't burned the house down, they're probably content not to have anything more to do with her.


	32. some day this dream will end

_some day this dream will end_

* * *

Toya raises an eyebrow as Ikuko goes upstairs, clutching the box she'd just found on the doorstep to her chest. "Package for you?" he asks lightly.

"Mmm-hmm."

At that slightly dreamy response, he puts his cup of grape juice down onto a clear patch of space on the coffee table and frowns at her. "Ikuko, is it really that interesting?"

"Yes, very. Now if you'll excuse me…" She disappears upstairs. A few moments later, there comes the tell-tale sound of the study door being slammed shut.

Such behavior on Ikuko's part is becoming increasingly commonplace. Picking up packages, disappearing into her study for hours at a time, never letting Toya inside anymore, coming and going. And of course, she never explains just what it is she's doing. It's just entirely too entertaining for Ikuko to have a secret that leaves her with flushed cheeks and feverishly bright eyes, and leaves Toya ever guessing.

"_No, no, no, Toya, it's not for you to know now! That would spoil the surprise."_

Right.

In the absence of so much as a hint from Ikuko as to what she's actually doing, Toya can confess that he was originally left at a loss. However, after having taken into account the behavior he's observed over the past couple of weeks, Toya's narrowed down the likely answer to all the riddles to three options.

One, Ikuko's making plans to write a new story, and these packages she's been getting hold the materials she needs to do so.

Two, she's procured for herself some manner of secret lover, and all these boxes she's been getting contain gifts and love letters.

Three, she's planning to take over the world, and the contents of her packages are parts for a doomsday machine with which she'll hold the world for ransom.

All told, Toya considers the answer behind door number one to be by far the most likely explanation for Ikuko's behavior. He really can't imagine her with some sort of paramour—he doesn't imagine Ikuko to even have been the type for schoolgirl crushes, back when she was a schoolgirl—and doesn't want to imagine Ikuko running off with someone and leaving him here alone. And as for the whole "take over the world" thing, Toya's rarely ever seen Ikuko put a great deal of energy into anything that doesn't involve writing. He suspects her attention span would run out long before the master plan (if she even bothered to come up with one) came to fruition.

Oh well. If Ikuko won't let him into her study, Toya may as well seek entertainment outside. He drains his cup of grape juice and leaves the cup on the coffee table—given her habits, he doubts Ikuko will mind, and even if she does, she can hardly complain.

The midsummer sunlight is bright and blinding; Toya winces and has to squint as he goes to sit on the steps leading down into the sand. It's been so rainy for the past couple of days that Toya, while relieved to be greeted by agreeable weather, had been left unprepared for such a bright sun. _I'm not even looking at the sun and being out here's like staring into a lit lamp._

All the same, though, Toya is glad to be out here, glad to be able to smell the salt air and not be pelted by rain. Glad enough that even the presence of tourists out on the beach, families with their children or solitary sunbathers, even they can't dampen his good cheer.

The beachgoers seem very remote as of now, some of them barely even a hundred feet from where he's sitting, but still seeming more like ants watched from a standing position than human beings in his close vicinity. The wind sprays sand in his face; the high-pitched laughter of some children draws Toya's attention away from brushing grit out of his eyes. He watches a pair of small children, looking enough alike that they're probably siblings, play with a striped beach ball.

_I'm turning into Ikuko. _It's not the first time such a thought has passed through Toya's mind, but it seems especially disquieting today, the idea of taking on the characteristics of others like some sort of sponge, but losing his own characteristics in the process. Ikuko often watches people, after all—often watches him. Toya grimaces. _Oh, get a grip; it's not that bad. If I was _really _turning into Ikuko, I'd be watching these kids from that rocking chair of hers up on the porch._

He's drawn away from his slightly worried thoughts by a cry of dismay from one of the children. Then, by a soft thud in the sand, as a beach ball with red, blue, white and yellow stripes, lands in the sand at his feet.

-0-0-0-

Ikuko is rather happy to report that since her mother chose to visit her home, she's heard nothing more from her family, not even a complaint about her having a friend over at her house—that's all they would know about Toya, but she knows that some of the more "proper" members of her family would consider even that scandalous behavior. It seems that the only reason the Hachijo family sent their representative out here was to make sure that Ikuko hadn't burned the house down and that they weren't going to find her rotted, desiccated corpse locked up in the study.

_And as for any "scandalous behavior" that I may or may not be committing, I suppose they already think of my as scandalous (I'm still not sure whether I like that or not). Likely nothing I would be doing or not doing would surprise them anymore._

She's also happy to report that Toya's not asked her anything more about it since the day Hachijo Kotone chose to "grace" this house with her presence—he has to all appearances chosen to respect her privacy on the matter, or perhaps simply lost interest; Ikuko doesn't care which. Ikuko doesn't particularly enjoy being quizzed about her family for any reason, or at any depth; if Ikuko had her way she'd far rather prefer to forget that her family ever existed, or that she was ever a member of that family to begin with.

Today, however, Ikuko is not dwelling on any of that. Today, Hachijo Ikuko is experiencing the simple, uncomplicated joy of seeing the first stage of a plan come to fruition.

It started with getting her hands on the forgeries purported to have been written by "Ushiromiya Maria." Ikuko had found their style unpolished, almost amateurish, yet at the same time oddly eloquent for stories that were supposed to have been written by a nine-year-old girl. But this did nothing to dampen her interest in the Rokkenjima massacre; indeed, it only inflamed it. From there on, Ikuko started putting out feelers, trying to see if there was any more work done on the Rokkenjima massacre and the family that had been killed there.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, Ikuko discovered that she was hardly the only one to be entranced by the disaster. There was no lack of information on the Ushiromiya family. Ikuko obtained transcripts of interviews with people who had been associates of the Ushiromiya, or those who had worked for them as servants over the years. There were also journal articles, testimonials, magazine articles, and even short books, non-fiction tomes that speculated on what happened on Rokkenjima that day.

And today has arrived on her doorstep the prize jewel in her crown of information. With a nudge, a whisper, a discreet push (and some not inconsiderable donations) in the right direction, Ikuko has gotten her hands on copies of the financial records of the adult members of the Ushiromiya family, stretching back, in the case of Krauss and Eva, thirty years, or as with Kinzo, as far as fifty. It took some doing, but the name Hachijo, even when borne by a disgraced daughter of that family, carries enough weight to make such a thing possible.

Though Ikuko was never a sociable creature growing up, she couldn't help but hear about the Ushiromiya family. Everyone who ran in the circle her family ran in had heard of them. They'd heard of the patriarch of that family, the "Goldsmith", brilliant and volatile Ushiromiya Kinzo. They'd heard of Krauss, the eldest son who made bad investment after bad investment. They'd heard of Eva, who was more fit to inherit but was barred from doing so because of her sex. Of Rudolf, serial adulterer whose first wife had died under suspicious circumstances—_Toya's father_. Of Rosa, who on first impression seemed sweet, mild, almost timid, but was capable of being just as volatile as her father.

It was rather hard not to hear about the Ushiromiya family.

At first, this absorption was just as aimless as many of Ikuko's past fascinations, meant purely for immediate gratification. She gobbled up this knowledge the way she gobbled up knowledge in the past, like chocolate that was pleasing to the tongue, but not fine enough to warrant savoring. But as she acquired more, read over more, Ikuko started to get an idea, started to get a feeling in her mind.

Maybe she could do something with it.

_These people, they've all formed their own opinions about what happened on Rokkenjima_, she thought to herself musingly. _Well, maybe I have opinions as well. Or maybe even if I don't, I want to explore it. But these people, they're not even contemplating how many different scenarios might have played out._

**Q: You said that the name given to you by the Fukuin House was "Ruon"?**

**A: Yes. The Fukuin House would give graduates of its "school" "special names" when they went to work for families such as the Ushiromiya family on Rokkenjima. My actual given name, as you already know, is Shina.**

**Q: And you were talking about this story about a witch?**

**A: Kinzo would circulate stories about a "Witch of the forest" to keep us from going into the woods. Of course, he also rambled on and on about the "Golden Witch" he'd gotten all his gold from. I don't think the old man could keep his witches straight in his head.**

This excerpt is part of an interview that Ikuko found especially interesting. It was this that had served as the spark to set the kindling aflame.

She wants to write.

In the fullness of time, once she has read the material and properly familiarized herself with it, Ikuko will write about this, about what happened on Rokkenjima when the Ushiromiya family was killed, and the mansion on that island destroyed. What she will write is not a non-fiction tome; there seems to be more than enough of those already. But what Ikuko will write instead is fiction—not so different than some of the books she's amassed on the subject, but more honest; Ikuko can not claim to really know what happened that day and won't try to.

_If I do this, it will be the first full-length novel I've ever written_, she realizes slowly, drawing her fingers across a bright red folder. _It would probably not be more than a couple of hundred pages long, but it will still be a novel. I… I've never tried that before. I wonder… Will I be able to keep my attention focused on it for long enough._

And what's more, she's not planning on writing it by herself.

Ikuko sighs and heads back downstairs, looking for Toya. Just on a whim, she peers out one of the living room windows and spies him sitting on the steps at the edge of the back porch. _Oh, there he is, getting covered in sand, no doubt. Wait… Who's that out there with him?_

Frowning, Ikuko quietly slips out onto the porch, wincing at the sunlight; barely going outside for several days will make the eyes over-sensitive, she concedes. There's Toya, sitting on the steps, holding a child's beach ball in his hands. And there, standing on the sand, fidgeting and rocking on the balls of her feet, is a tiny little girl in a polka-dotted yellow bathing suit.

Ikuko's frown only deepens as she looks at the girl. Toya is holding the beach ball out to her, trying to get her to take it back. The girl smiles shyly, but clearly reluctant to step forward and claim her toy. She has skin as pale as marble, and made even pastier in appearance by globs of sunscreen that seem to have been spread to thickly across her nose and shoulders. Her thin, fine hair is so light a blonde as to be not so far apart in shade from Toya's white-haired head. A foreigner, likely. A tourist, certainly.

With a swish of her skirt, Ikuko steps forward, and smiles coolly at the girl. "Child of Man, where are you supposed to be?" Rewarded by two pairs of startled eyes, Ikuko waits for a response, standing tall and stock-still.

Whether she understands Japanese or not, the girl seems to understand the message Ikuko's trying to get across. Her pale blue eyes flick to Toya and she smiles again, a smile Ikuko is surprised to see Toya return; he's rarely so at ease around a stranger, or so Ikuko has observed. The girl snatches her ball out of the young man's hands and runs back down the beach towards another small child.

Once left alone, Ikuko shoots a quizzical look at her housemate. "I thought you didn't like strangers."

Toya shrugs, not looking at her, but out at the ocean with an abstracted expression on his face. "Not normally, no. But I guess I'm okay with kids." After a long moment of silence, he looks up at her, squinting. "So… Any reason you've ventured out of the cave?"

"Hmph." Ikuko pulls a smile up on her mouth, not the cool smile of thirty seconds ago but that cat-smile more reminiscent of her. "Do I need a reason to come out on my own porch? And I don't know _what _you mean by 'cave'," she remarks primly.

To this, Toya snorts and grins briefly, before turning his eyes ocean-ward again.

As for herself, Ikuko finds that her courage has utterly failed her.

In this moment, she would have asked him if he wanted to write this story she's planning with her. In the interest of pragmatism, Ikuko needed someone writing this with her to keep her from. In truth, she did not _want _to write it alone. No longer does she thirst for total solitude, not in daily life, and not in this.

But there's still that fear, of him remembering, and her coming to be perceived as liar, deceiver, jailor, after all this time. Of being abandoned, and left alone again.

(It might be better, in that case, to keep him in the dark about all of this, but Ikuko fears rousing his suspicion if she did that and he found out halfway through. _There seems to be nothing for me to do that won't carry some risk._

_And since when have I not wanted him to find out, anyways? When did I decide that I didn't want him to know? There's that journal I still write in about him and his 'progress', or lack thereof—why do I keep writing in it if I don't want him to remember?_)

Ikuko's glad Toya's so absorbed in his watching of the ocean. She wouldn't want to think how he would react to the shadow that has passed over her face.

She'll ask him tomorrow.


	33. a change in the wind

_a change in the wind_

* * *

"I wanted to ask you something."

Rare is the day in which Toya and Ikuko take lunch together; normally, they'll eat breakfast, and maybe supper together, but Toya gets hungry for lunch a lot earlier in the day than Ikuko, so their lunchtimes don't coincide under normal circumstances. But today, for whatever reason, Ikuko came downstairs for lunch a good hour and a half earlier than she usually does, so while Toya wolfs down a cold sandwich, she leans against the counter with her own bowl of soup, and stares at him with narrowed eyes.

Toya swallows down a chunk of bread, ham and tomato, and looks at her quizzically. "Well, what do you want to ask me about?"

Personally, there are a number of things Toya would like to ask Ikuko, not least of which are "What have you been doing up in your study all this time?", "Why won't you let me in there anymore?", and "_When _are you going to let me back inside?" But despite his burning curiosity (burning as brightly as the flames of a thousand suns—or something like that), Toya supposes he may as well let Ikuko ask her question first. Only fair.

She breathes deep from her chest, staring down into her soup bowl, and this, to Toya, is just exemplary of how oddly Ikuko's been acting lately. She seems… nervous, almost; sine when has Ikuko ever been nervous about anything? _Completely out-of-character. Whatever this is, it must be important._

After a few moments, Ikuko looks up from her study of her own reflection and smiles. "I've been making plans to write a book, and I wanted to know if you'd be interested in joining me."

Toya perks up a bit. _Oh so that's why she's all but living in her study these days._ He's been finding himself the victim of the midsummer doldrums for a while now; this sounds like just the sort of thing that would stave off boredom. But then, he realizes just what it is she said. "Wait… Did you say you were writing a _book_?" There's a large difference between a short story and a book, as they both know well, and Toya doubts highly that Ikuko's ever attempted to write a book.

Ikuko tilts her head to the side like a curious child. "It should, I think, give us something to do for the next few months, at least."

"Yeah, if we don't get bored and go looking for something else to do. So what's this book supposed to be about?"

A shadow passes over her eyes. "It's to be a fictionalized account of the massacre of the Ushiromiya family."

Toya nods, lips creasing slightly. He's heard of the Ushiromiya family before. he's not entirely sure where he's heard of them, but the name's familiar. "Okay."

He'll do it.

Should be interesting.


	34. Coincidences

_Coincidences_

* * *

Toya is becoming acquainted with a truth he never would have conceived of a year, a month, or even a week ago: sometimes, writing can be just brain-breakingly boring.

Well, not writing exactly. For this novel Ikuko's proposed they write, they haven't started the writing, or even started writing an outline. Instead, they're doing some reading for the purpose of edification. _Lots _of reading.

Interviews, testimonials, articles. Birth records, financial records (Toya wonders for a moment if that's even legal, but then decides not to worry about it), and even non-fiction books; Ikuko certainly wasn't the first to have this idea. Ikuko's really pulled out all the stops; she's insisting that they both read (or look at, with photographs, or listen to, in the case of audio interviews) every bit of material she's amassed before they can even _think _of making up an outline.

_It's probably just as well that it's been raining for a week now. _Toya casts a glance out of the window, where the surface of the ocean is rough with rain and no one can tell where the mud ends the sand begins. _I'd be pining for the outside by now if it wasn't_.

"So, can you maybe explain a little better what you want to do with this 'witch'?" Toya asks skeptically. Ikuko's been hinting at wanting to do something with the famed 'Witch of Rokkenjima' in terms of the story, and her hinting has given Toya the impression that Ikuko's wants do so more than just mention her as part of the legends surrounding the island.

Sitting beside him at the center table in the study (the good news is that Ikuko's finally let Toya back in the study), Ikuko smiles secretively and shakes her head. "No, no. Not _yet_, Toya. It's far too early on for _that. _I want it to be a surprise, and you won't be able to appreciate the surprise for what it is until you've properly familiarized yourself with all the material. No keep reading."

Toya sighs ("Oh, don't be such a baby. You _like _reading, remember?") and continues on with his reading.

It is fascinating in a way, Toya supposes. Great big filthy rich family with more issues than you can shake a stick at meet up on the family island (seriously, what family has an _island_?) for some annual conference, and gets blown up. But, the sources are quick to remind him, most of the inhabitants of the island were already dead _before _the bomb went off, from having been shot by the local supply of sawed-off Winchester rifles.

So what happened?

Did the family patriarch decide to off his family and servants?

Did one of the heirs decide they wanted to cut down on the competition, and thing just got out of hand?

Did one of the servants (yeah, yeah, Toya _knows _that violates Van Dine's Eleventh, but this is real life we're talking about here, not a mystery story; anything goes) get denied a pay raise or something?

_Or maybe_, Toya muses whimsically, _this 'Witch of the Forest' decided to drop by the mansion and tear things up. Reclaiming the land for its original inhabitants, and all that. It's not like Witches are known for reasonable behavior._

Ah well. They'll be formulating they're own hypotheses about what happened on the island in 1986 soon enough. Then Toya will be able to speculate and hypothesize and fantasize to his heart's content. _For now, I'm stuck going through all this blasted paperwork. _

To break the monotony, Toya switches gears, and starts going through the massive, lopsided stack of photographs Ikuko's laid out on the table in front of them.

The one good thing, Toya concedes, about these photos is that, even though they aren't organized in any way, Ikuko's gone to the trouble of writing information on the back of them, giving names, dates (as best as she can determine), and some context as regards to the photo itself. His gaze turns to the photo at the very top of the stack.

'_Ushiromiya Battler, c. 1985, first day of high school.' _The photo shows many young boys together, but one of them has been circled delicately with blue ink. He was standing perpendicular to the path of the camera, and as such Toya is given only the view of half of the boy's face. The quality of the photograph is less than ideal, but even in this faded medium Toya can see that the boy is tall and lanky, with messy hair a shade of red not commonly found in nature, and a dopey grin.

'Battler.'

Not for the first time since he started going over this information, Toya reflects on what a stupid name that is.

"Who in their right mind names their kid 'Battler'?" he mutters under his breath.

"I beg your pardon?" Ikuko looks up from her own perusal, her purple eyes open wider than usual in curiosity.

Now is as good a time as any to air his irritation. "Okay, the old man was in love with Western culture; he gave his kids Western names and the idea stuck. I get that. Kinzo's kids are called Krauss, Eva, Rudolf, and Rosa; those are all pretty plausible Western-sounding names, don't you think?" Toya's brow furrows, his jaw tightening as he goes on. "And in the next generation, we've got George, Jessica, Maria, Ange. All perfectly plausible Western-sounding names, too. But then, we've got 'Battler.' Where did _that _come from?" Toya wonders aloud irritably.

Ikuko purses her lips. "Well, perhaps Rudolf and Asumu felt that their first child would be willing to take on all challengers."

Toya shakes his head. "I _think _his parents must have hated him. That or his dad was drunk and his mother was still high on painkillers when they decided on a name."

Ikuko pats his shoulder in mock commiseration, chuckling but not responding to his assertion.

Toya scowls down at the photo.

_What a stupid name._


	35. The Island of Nowhere

_The Island of Nowhere_

* * *

It's another day that's dawned without sun, though this time, instead of rain, the beach is chocked and blinded by fog. Toya looks out the window and it takes his eyes a few second to discern anything beyond a screen of woolen gray. The beach is empty of people; an eerie silence permeates the walls, the furniture, the clothes on his body.

So, obviously, it's the best sort of day for reading ghost stories.

Alright, so maybe what Toya's reading isn't exactly a ghost story. But it has the feel of one, and probably was written by a ghost. That's close enough.

They, he and Ikuko, have nearly worked their way through all off the latter's amassed information on Rokkenjima and the Ushiromiya family. Toya's head spins regularly when he even tries to differentiate between _this _and _that _and _Oh look at that; isn't it interesting?_, but Ikuko tells him that will pass in time, and he'll be able to put all of what he's learned to use with ease.

Toya is down to his last bit of work now. All that's left for him is to read the "forgeries", as Ikuko calls them. According to her, these spare, sparse manuscripts, the longer of the two no more than seventy-five pages, are copies of "messages found in bottles", purported to have been written by Ushiromiya Maria. Ikuko's brow creased with skepticism as she related that part to him, and flipping through the first one now, Toya can see why. This, all of this, is way too eloquent for a nine-year-old.

But oh well. _That only deepens the mystery, _he muses with a faint smile. _If this was not written by the person the signature belongs to, than who _is _responsible for the "forgeries"? I suppose we'll be hypothesizing about that, too._

Leaning back into the pillows at the head of his bed, Toya breathes deeply, and starts to read.

"'_We started up the steep walkway, my cousins and I. It was exceedingly rare that we could be together like this (though Ange's absence, I think was a blight on an otherwise perfect day), and this was the first time any of us had seen Battler in six years—I would have forgotten what he looked like, had it not been for the pictures in Rudolf-ojisan and Kyrie-obasan's house. We were in high spirits, as we mounted the rickety stairs, oblivious to the dangers of rough-housing on the old scaffolding.'"_

Once again, Toya nods and thinks that there's no way this could have been written by a nine-year-old—he doesn't care how smart the kid was. The temperature in his room seems to drop suddenly, but he does not notice except to pull his body closer towards the quilt spread out across the bed. He reads on.

"'_We reached the end of the walkway, at the edge of the cliff high above the shores below. As we went on, the mansion of Rokkenjima came into—"_

Suddenly, a blinding flash of pain splits his skull in two. Toya clutches the sides of his head, eyes watering and the world going black and white and starry. He chokes, stomach heaving, heart hammering in his chest. _What's… happening_? Then, an image, hazy and gritty like the screen on an old movie, rises out of the depths of his mind.

_He's standing somewhere, among trees and grass. A sweet smell, the smell of roses, reaches out from in front of him; the salt-smell of the ocean from behind. A brisk wind blows through his hair. There are voices around him. He hears nothing, can not differentiate between these voices or tell how many there are, but he knows that there are voices. There are people around him, and he's walking towards him, but he doesn't know what._

The worst of the pain subsides after that flash, but Toya's head still aches and he's left weak and shaking, doused in cold sweat. He stares blankly at the opposite wall, not really seeing it. He slumps to one side, his cheeks pressing against the wall the bed's pressed up against, and Toya feels cold and numb, as though his insides have been packed with snow.

But then, a sense of visceral fear clenches around his heart, as Toya realizes what's just happened. An image from the first eighteen forgotten years of his life has just come back to him.


	36. Things Not Said

_Things Not Said_

* * *

She hears him before she sees him, footfalls heavy and uneven in the hall, like the pace of someone wounded or ill. There comes a rapping at the study door. "Ikuko?" Toya calls, his voice faint and muddled through the wood. But even through that barrier, Ikuko can hear the irregular shake and trembling in his words.

Frowning slightly, Ikuko gets up from her chair, disrupting a now-disgruntled Bernkastel in the process, who slinks off to some shadowy corner. _Now what's up with him? _She nearly trips over a box left forgotten on the floor before she gets to the door, and opens it to find a pale, sweating Toya leaning against the sill, twisting his hands like old newspaper and not meeting her gaze.

"Toya…" Ikuko stares at him, lost for words for just a moment. "…Are you ill?" Ikuko can probably count on one hand the number of times she's seen Toya sick, in all the years they've known each other. He's always been in possession of rude health, more than capable of going years at a time without showing even the slightest signs of illness. And when he _does _get sick, it's never a serious illness, and he always shakes off his cough or fever within a couple of days. She can't envisage illness coming on him so suddenly as it seems to have done now.

"Can I sit down?"

Too thrown by his odd behavior to stall him or remark on Toya feeling the need to actually ask, Ikuko stands aside in a sweep of long skirts, her eyes never leaving Toya as he folds his tall frame into a chair—these chairs were always meant for someone shorter. _Now what's gotten into him? _He's panting slightly, as though he'd just gotten back from a jog on the beach. _To look at him, you'd think he'd gone out into the fog and seen a ghost._

Finally, Ikuko reclaims her tongue enough to remark, without most of her usual wit, "You look like you've been Bloody Mary in the mirror. What, have you been tempting old folktales?"

Toya seems not to notice. He takes a few deep breaths and a sick swallow, his knuckles white upon his knees. Even with a desk fan on and busily blowing cold air, to Ikuko, the air in the study suddenly grows close and thick, viscous enough to catch in her throat.

"Ikuko… Have you ever had… I dunno… _waking dreams_?" He licks his lips and swallows again, wet teeth and mouth glistening in the light.

At that, the cogs start whirling in Ikuko's mind. _Now what exactly does this mean? What secret are you hiding from me? _Curiosity ignites in her eyes and mouth, but the thick, sticky feeling in her throat remains, and starts sliding down into her chest. Ikuko smoothes down her skirt as she slides into a chair beside him. "I can't say that I have." Her eyes settle on his mouth, noting chapped lips. "Why don't you tell me about it?" _Listen closely._

"Well…" He draws another long, deep breath, as if trying to force some semblance of equanimity into his veins. "For one thing, it wasn't a waking dream, or a dream at all."

"Then why did you cal it that?" Ikuko can't resist the urge to ask.

Toya shoots her a half-hearted glare that makes Ikuko suppose that she'll just have to keep her mouth shut if she wants to get anything more. _Though given the sort of effort that involves, this had better be worth it. It had better be interesting, not boring. _"I was reading over those manuscripts you gave me," he says quietly, staring at a wall hanging rather than meet her gaze. "And I… I saw something."

Ikuko frowns, her gaze all but boring holes into the side of Toya's head.

"I was standing somewhere—on an island, I think. And there were…" He squeezes his eyes shut, lines digging into his cheeks and around his eyes "…there were voices. There were people with me. I couldn't see them. I couldn't hear their voices. I don't know how I knew they were there. I just did."

"Are you sure this wasn't just some sort of daydream?" Ikuko asks, and all the while her blood starts to race.

_He's remembered. It's finally happened. He's remembered something._

Toya shakes his head violently. "No, it wasn't. It was real, I swear it was." His voice shakes. "It was real. It _was _real. It—" He grasps the sides of his head, shoulders hunching like the haunches of some great bird in the clutches of agony. Toya's suddenly labored breathing whistles out from between clenched teeth, filling up every last inch and corner of the room. "It…" His lips quiver. "It…"

_He looks like he's having some sort of seizure, _Ikuko notes, staring at him warily and wondering if he might keel over on top of her at any moment. She springs to her feet, heading towards the door. "Wait there, Toya. I'm going to get you some Tylenol." Though he doesn't answer, Ikuko can only assume that he must have heard her, and quite frankly, whether Toya _wants _Tylenol or not is beside the point; he _needs _it, and Ikuko will make sure he gets it.

_So, after all these years, he's finally remembered something. Something small, and relatively insignificant. And yet it's affected him so. And yet…_

Tylenol is a drug often enough consumed in this house, whether it be by Ikuko, Toya, or the servants, to whom the bottle is open if they have headaches or pain (It's really just not convenient to have the people washing your windows and vacuuming your floors bent-double in pain, Ikuko maintains. Not convenient at all). Thankfully, however, this one is new, and nearly full. Ikuko tips two white pills out onto her palm, and fills up a glass with water.

Her fingers itch to write, to record. Toya's finally remembered something! It's not much, but he's remembered something! This is the moment Ikuko's been waiting on for years now, waiting, watching.

And yet.

He'd trembled like an autumn leaf clinging desperately to an otherwise barren branch, battered by the wind on all sides, already dead, brittle brown. There were lines etched in his face like scratch marks carved in stone. Pain seemed to seep down out of his head and into every bone in his body.

Ikuko catches sight of her reflection in the mirror. Bright, feverish eyes. Pale face with red spots at the top of her cheeks. Lips mashed tight together. Is that anticipation she sees? Or maybe something else?

A soft groan reaches her ears. Shelving all unnecessary thought, Ikuko goes back to where Toya's curling in on himself.


	37. the freedom of apathy

_the freedom of apathy_

* * *

There's a question that's been nagging at Toya since they started the writing.

He's been waiting, half-anticipatory, half-apprehensive, for his next flash of memory, for the next fragment of his hazy past life to return to him. So far, Toya's gotten nothing concrete, just vague sensations of déjà-vu he can't place. A sight, a sound, a smell. It means something to him and he's not sure why, and if he tries too hard to think about why it's significant, his head just starts to throb again, stars exploding behind his eyes.

Toya gets the feeling of his world shrinking. He feels like there's something hot on his heels, encroaching on the edges of his awareness, and frankly, Toya's afraid to find out the truth sitting at the bottom of all the riddles. He doesn't want to know. This goes beyond a simple desire to build a new life with the identity he woke up with in the hospital—Toya doesn't want to keep that identity so much as he fears the reality of his old one.

So when the question starts to tug at his mind, Toya tries to ignore it. Whenever he gets one of these spontaneous lines of thought these days, he finds it suspect, wondering if this is really something _he _thought of, or if it's the conception of his other-self, his old identity infecting his mind with the question. But the question's been burning at him so badly that he can't ignore it any longer.

Ikuko's poring over the plot outline for what feels like the umpteenth time, checking for any conceivable inconsistencies. Though this has ostensibly been a collaborative effort, Toya's not contributed much to the writing. Ikuko does the lion's share of the working, being the more experienced writer. Toya occasionally supplies ideas and character touches that just feel… _right _to him (right without knowing why), but that's about it. Ikuko doesn't really seem to mind, and for that, Toya is grateful—whenever he thinks about this book of theirs, he feels woefully inadequate.

He stares down at her purplish-black head, long tendrils of hair falling over her back and shoulders. She is the very picture of authorial dedication, and he hates to disturb her, but…

"Ikuko?"

"Hmm."

"Do… Do you think that, maybe, this is disrespectful to the dead?"

She doesn't respond for a long time, pen still scratching on paper, words almost magically materializing from the ink. Then, Ikuko lays down her pen and sits up in her chair, looking up at Toya with a curiously neutral expression on her face. "What do you mean?"

Here's another change in the world around him that's thrown Toya a bit off his axis: Ikuko's odd shift in personality. She still teases him sometimes, still acts like herself sometimes, but these days she is for the most part almost off-puttingly serious. At this point, Toya's almost ready to go around saying nothing but the most inanely stupid things, just to get her to behave normally. Anything to see that _she _at least does not have a face that she hides from him.

He shrugs, not meeting her gaze. "It just feels like it's disrespectful to the dead."

"Toya, countless novels have been written based on the lives of people who are now dead, and you don't see _them _being criticized as disrespectful. Just think of it like that."

In that moment, Toya nods, envying Ikuko her apathy towards things like this, and wishes he could just put the question and everything else that comes with it, out of his mind.


	38. lost somewhere, in the clutter

Well, it's been a year since I started writing this… And you know, I'd envisioned that I'd be done by now. But as it turns out, I'm not even halfway done.

* * *

_lost somewhere, in the clutter_

* * *

There was frost on the windows this morning, gathering around the edges like cobwebs. Pretty cobwebs, to be sure, glittering in any level of light, but still resembling the wretched things, until they melted with the rising of a weak autumn sun, that hovered falteringly in the sky before going to hide behind clouds growing progressively dark gray towards the center.

Ikuko has a head cold and has not stirred from her bedroom except to bathe for three days; she has Harumi, who was at least once heard to mutter _"This is _not_ what I was paid for" _bring her up food. Soup, soup, always soup. She can barely stomach anything solid, or at least Toya can hear her say. He tried to visit her, but she wouldn't even let him pass through the door.

"_No, no, Toya, you can't come in here! You'd just get sick too, and then what would we do? I'll come out when I feel well again, and not a moment sooner!"_

Thus, Toya is left to entertain himself.

He doesn't feel like working on their mystery novel; it doesn't feel right to try and write anything without Ikuko (who will only accept the company of her books and her cat today, and won't even think of countenancing a pen) present, given that she's been the main fount of skill. After all, Toya just provides his occasional moments of insight and inspiration. She's the one who does the bulk of the work, she's the skilled, experienced, polished writer. Even if they are basing this novel off of the first of the two manuscripts found floating in a wine bottle years ago, it's still been an exhausting amount of work. She could probably do it by herself, but he doesn't think he's capable of the same.

Still, Toya can find no solace in the books of Ikuko's library today. Given how many new books she acquires with each passing month—there are ever-growing piles of books on the floor now that there are no shelves to accommodate them; Ikuko keeps saying she's going to buy more bookshelves, but never says when—it's not like Toya's even come close to reading them all, but he just isn't in the mood for reading today.

The weather is also not the sort that encourages going outside—chilly, overcast, always threatening rain. In truth, though, even if the weather was perfect, Toya still wouldn't want to go outside. He hasn't really wanted to stray from the roof and walls of this house since he became reacquainted with the first memory of his past life. He feels as though if he steps outside the safety of this house, gravity will betray him and he will be left to cling to the skin of the earth, waiting for the moment when his grip fails him and he goes hurtling out into oblivion.

Wandering the house by himself on days like this, alone, is an eerie exercise. Toya walks the halls, the sound of his footsteps growing unnaturally loud. Any sort of rapping on the window, be it by wind or branch makes him jump. He looks at the shadows and expects some eldritch creature to melt away from them, drawing its form from the darkness. He barely notices where his feet are carrying him until he finds himself standing outside the door to Ikuko's study.

Inside, strewn all over the table in the middle of the room are papers, photographs, books, newspapers, journals, any and all information pertaining to the Ushiromiya family and the incident that took place on Rokkenjima in 1986, so much that the table groans wearily beneath their weight. Here Toya has spent most of his time for the past few months, and here he sits down again, starting to rifle through the myriad tidbits of information for something interesting to read.

He comes up first with that stack of financial documents that he has no idea how Ikuko got her hands on in the first place, and almost immediately puts them out of sight. Ikuko might consider everything of interest, but Toya finds the financial documents all but criminally boring. _There must be something more interesting here, that I've never seen._

1988 journal, seen it.

The first manuscript, seen it.

Interviews from 1989, 1990 and 1991, seen it.

School records, seen it.

Photo—

Toya pauses as he comes up with a large photograph, staring at it, feeling the muscles in his face slacken.

They've been writing a story about a witch slaughtering a family, based very loosely on the first of the two manuscripts found in a wine bottle. They've been writing a story about a witch, but Toya has never actually seen a photo of the witch. He's never known what she's supposed to look like with his own eyes.

This is a photograph of the portrait of the woman called Beatrice, whom Kinzo had claimed had given him his gold and he and others called 'The Golden Witch.' It hang in the entrance hall of the Ushiromiya mansion, Toya thinks. Some—no, many—claim that if this was a real woman, she was likely Kinzo's mistress. Toya doesn't if that's true; maybe she was. But he thinks that if the woman isn't present to confirm or deny the rumors, the rumormongers shouldn't be spouting them. _Why are people always so quick to assume that a woman who had some sort of partnership with a man was his mistress? Is that really the best they can do, to assume that she had so much influence over him thanks to the allure of her body?_

He's never seen the photograph of her portrait before, and the first thing Toya is struck by is just how breathtakingly beautiful the woman is. His breath catches in his throat to look at her golden beauty. She has golden hair and blue eyes, and fair, clear skin, but it's not even that, not really, that stands out to him as beautiful. It's the faint hint of mischief in that smile, in those deep red, seemingly prim lips, the way those lips curl slightly in one direction. Her eyes glint knowingly. Whoever she was, she looks like a woman who had many secrets, and enjoyed having them.

Toya thinks that, even though he's always abhorred meeting strangers, he would have liked to know this woman. She looks like someone it would have been fun to know, someone who never would have been boring or dull.

And he wonders, suddenly unnerved, why he was so immediately drawn to this picture, and the woman in it, and lays it down, face-down on the table, refusing to look at it again.


	39. A Spark of Genius

_A Spark of Genius_

* * *

"I don't believe it," Ikuko murmurs suddenly, staring down at the page she's been writing on, half-filled with words and marred in places with blotches of ink.

Toya looks at her with his brow drawn up. "What can't you believe?"

Ikuko gesticulates at the page, the jewels in her rings flashing under the overhead light. "Well just _look_, Toya. We're nearly done." A smile starts to grow, thick and fast, over her pale face—not her typical type, but an excited, almost jumping smile. "I _never _thought we were going to get this done, and look, all we have left is the epilogue. Isn't this an achievement?"

Slowly, Toya cracks a smile as well. "Yeah, I guess it is." That smile, which had for a time grown scarce enough that Ikuko had almost entirely forgotten what it looked like, has been appearing again more and more lately. He seems to be alright again, even if (or perhaps because) he hasn't remembered anything more about himself, and Ikuko is grateful for the return of that smile.

A bubbly, giddy feeling washes over her, over her arms and legs and fingers and toes. She's never completed a novel-length story before. Unbeknownst to Toya, Ikuko has tried to write them before, but _never _has she finished a novel she set out to write. Never until now. "I want to publish this," she announces suddenly, feeling as though if she doesn't get those words out now, she never will. She's never published anything before either, but this could really be…

"Whoa, whoa, slow down." Toya's entirely too reasonable voice breaks in on her thoughts. "We're not even done yet. We've got to write the epilogue first."

Reluctantly, Ikuko comes down off of that sudden, dizzying high to agree with him. "Yes, yes, we need to write the epilogue." Something occurs to her and she groans, clapping a hand over her eyes theatrically. "Oh, Toya… We haven't got a name for the witch Beatrice speaks with in the epilogue."

For a moment, Toya winces. "Yeah, that's a problem alright." Then he looks off to the side and a grin curls up the sides of his lips. "I know… we can call her Bernkastel." Almost as if in direct response, Bernkastel the cat jumps up into his lap and curls into a dense ball of long black fur.

Ikuko pauses to consider the merits of this. Then, she nods, a thin-lipped cat's smile tilting her mouth. "Yes, that sounds like a wonderful idea."

The cruelest witch in all the universe shall be named for a cat who was named for a wine bottle.


End file.
